Nashville Predators need more physicality and speed to get where they want

It's a tough start to the season for the Nashville Predators, but they have rebounded recently to get two consecutive wins including a win Friday night on the road against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Certainly, not the one, that people were expecting. Problem is, that there might be some issues that they may not be able to solve.

A rough start to season sometimes happens even to the best of teams. Some of them recover, some don't.

Last season, Edmonton Oilers started the season 2-10 and a lot of analysts thought that they won't make the playoffs. But they were able to turn the season around. After that they went on a 15 game-winning streak and eventually were game away from winning the cup.

It's a good example that there's no need to panic if you're the Nashville Predators. Not just yet at least. But there are some major differences.

Preds are lacking in speed and physicality

When you look at this current Nashville roster, first thing that jumps out is that they're slow. In the game against Edmonton, where they lost 4-2, they lost a lot of board battles and looked a step slow during the game. Edmonton looked more physical, more intense and Nashville couldn't keep up with that. In the game against Detroit, a similar story.

Nashville will create chances offensively. But for them to be succesful, they need to get in the open ice. To do that, you need to win board battles, force turnovers and win face-offs. Can they press the puck? I'm not sure. Can Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault or Filip Forsberg do that?

It's hard to score in the half court. Especially, if you don't have big forwards, who could skate around and win board battles or defenders, who could blast from the blue line. Roman Josi or Luke Schenn could do that occasionally, but that's not their strengths.

At this point in their careers, Stamkos and Marchessault need to get the puck in the positions, where they can be effective, instead of creating for themselves. They will put the puck on the net. Stamkos has 23 shots on goal thus far, Marchessault with 24. Only Forsberg and Josi has more. But they won't press the puck and we can see that from takeaways. Stamkos has four takeaways, Marchessault with zero thus far.

It's hard to get up and running, when you can't force turnovers.

That puts a lot of pressure on Forsberg. As expected, he leads the team in points with seven wit Ryan O'Reilly at six points.

What's even more impressive, that Forsberg has 20 hits already. That's more than Stamkos and Marchessault combined. And this is how you get the puck back. But the main thing is, that he has to be the main initiator offensively. Puck control is 12.4 % higher when Forsberg is on the ice. Without him, they can't hold the puck, which means, they won't be able to create consistently.

Preds getting pushed around on defensive end?

Defensively they have some issues too. On offense, Josi or Skjei are great players, but they do similar things. They like to have the puck and try to create. Whether by passing or shooting the puck. No surprise, that they both have 20-plus shots and are top 4 in this team.

But on defense, they're too small and can't really bother bigger forwards. That's why Nashville is allowing so many goals from in front of the net. Overall, they don't have a bigger defender who can cover space and clean the goalie area.

Probably Jeremy Lauzon is closest to that, but he's 6'3. Someone like Logan Stanley or Tyler Myers could really make an impact. That would help on the penalty kill too, because they would cover more space, which would make diagonal passes much more difficult to make.

Overall, the Predators do have potential to have great season, but a lot of it depends on their older players. When player hits 34 or 35, they're productivity could go downward really fast. Will this be the season, where Stamkos or Marchessault hit the wall? Hopefully not.