Nashville Predators at Vancouver Canucks 1st Round Preview: Who has the Edge?

Special Teams

This is the area where I fear if it gets out of control with too many penalties, the Canucks can assert their dominance and give the Predators a lot of problems.

The Canucks actually one had one power play goal in their three wins over the Predators this season. Again, two of these three meetings you have to go back to October so hard to take too much stock into anything in the head-to-head series.

Elias Pettersson and his top power play unit along with Quinn Hughes will be a nightmare for the Predators penalty kill. The Predators have done a great job playing disciplined, but aggressive hockey over the past couple of months and it will be critical that they carry that into this series.

On the flip side, the Predators power play has been a rollercoaster. At time it looks like its finally hitting hits peak performance level, and other times it looks like they can't even figure out how to enter the offensive zone to get set up.

I love the Predators chances of having the edge at 5-on-5 hockey, but fear they'll quickly get taken out of their game if they trade power plays with the Canucks. I'm not sure they'll be able to keep up and match the success of the Canucks power play.

The Predators and Canucks averaged a similar amount of penalty minutes per game in the regular season, with the Predators being 11th-most and Canucks at 12th-most. But a much larger chunk of the types of penalties the Predators took were fighting majors. The Predators took 34 majors while the Canucks took only 20.

With the way the Predators have been locked in playing a playoff intensity brand of hockey since February, I'm confident they'll minimize the penalties the best they can and not gift the Canucks with easy scoring chances.

That being said, I give the strong edge to the Canucks when it goes to special teams.