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

It took until the second to last night of the 2023-24 regular season, but we finally know that the Nashville Predators will take on the Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

At first glance this may look like a terrible first round draw for the Predators considering they lost 3-0 in the season series while being outscored 13-6. But it also feels like these teams, especially the Predators, are very different since their last meeting in December.

Its the first trip to the playoffs for the Canucks since 2020 when they lost in the second round. It's also just their second playoff appearance since 2015.

And for the Predators, they had a string of eight-straight playoff appearances snapped last season, but Head Coach Andrew Brunette took over and surprisingly got the Predators back into the dance.

The Predators and Canucks have met only one other time in the playoffs, a 2011 Conference Semi-Finals meeting that went six games with Pekka Rinne in net.

It's picking your poison on who you would rather face in the first round because it's the Stanley Cup Playoffs. There are no "easy" opponents. All of them are dangerous and can get hot at the right time and end up hoisting the Stanley Cup. But if we're talking about just the "better" draw for the Predators, the Canucks were the most favorable they could've asked for.

Let's see who I think has the edge in these four key categories for Predators at Canucks. Game 1 is 10 PM ET on Sunday at Vancouver.

Battle of Superstars

Let's first take a look at each team's superstar weapons and who might have the slight edge when stacking against each other.

For the Canucks, it starts with Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes. Pettersson actually saw a decline in point production this season, but still finished with 89 points and a deadly shooting percentage of 16.4.

Pettersson does so much of his damage on the power play when he gets loose in the slot and has open range target practice on goalies. He notched 13 power play goals this season, and added another 18 assists on the man advantage to push the Canucks to the 10th-ranked power play.

Hughes is the frontrunner to win the Norris Trophy, with Cale Makar and Roman Josi chasing him. We'll get to Josi in a second. But for Hughes, he has broke out and eclipsed the 90-point mark while being an elite puck distributor with 74 assists.

Just like Pettersson, Hughes does most of his damage on the power play with 32 helpers while on the power play.

But the two top superstars for the Canucks actually didn't even lead the team in points this season. That goes to J.T. Miller with 103 points. The 30-year-old veteran has a 19 percent shooting percentage and is one of the better two-way players in the NHL with 217 hits and 61 blocks.

Brock Boeser leads the Canucks in goals with 40. The Canucks are sixth in the NHL in goals per game at 3.42. The Predators rallied to finish 10th in this category with 3.24 goal per game.

Shifting to the Predators, Filip Forsberg has taken the next step into elite superstardom this season. Forsberg has always been a great player, but there was always questions of if he can take the next step into elite territory. His 2021-22 campaign suggested he could, but we needed to see it again. Then the concussion ends last season prematurely, and now to current times he has exploded thanks in large part to Brunette's system and getting two quality linemates in Ryan O'Reilly and Gus Nyquist.

Josi is right behind Hughes in the Norris Trophy race which is incredible on its own with Josi about to turn 34-years-old. Josi also has steadily improved the defensive side of his game with 151 blocks, his highest season total since 2014-15. Hughes has just 54 blocks. Not a knock necessarily, just an observation.

Forsberg and Josi have been in these high pressure playoff moments before for this franchise. Pettersson and Hughes have only 17 games each of playoff experience.

O'Reilly also has immense playoff experience that includes a Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe trophy.

Juuse Saros can also be considered a superstar talent, and Thatcher Demko has certainly had a superstar caliber season up until his injury. But Demko has just four games of playoff experience, while Saros has 17 games (10 starts) of playoff experience. More on the head-to-head comparison between the goalies later in this piece.

When comparing the top end superstar talent on both rosters, it's a toss up for me. You really can't unequivocally say one is better than the other. It will be fun to see who shows up more for their respective team. It will mean a lot to who advances.

The Depth

Playoff series are won with depth and grinding down the opponent. A major key to the Predators' success, and being way ahead of schedule in Year 1 under Brunette, is their depth enjoying career years in the NHL.

If you consider the superstars on both sides being a toss up, which I do, then this series might hinge on who has the better depth. The Canucks have nine players with 30-plus points, and the Predators have eight players at 30-plus points. Pretty solid job by both teams at distributing the wealth and not being top heavy.

The Predators got more contributions than anyone could have reasonably expected going into the season. With Brunette taking over, no one even knew for sure how the bottom six would look. But fringe NHL/AHL guys stepped in and had career high years in the NHL.

If the Predators are going to pull off a first round upset over the Canucks, then the continued impacts of Michael McCarron, Kiefer Sherwood and Cole Smith could be the difference-maker that sways the series slightly into the Predators' favor.

This trio that leads the Predators fourth line all had 20-plus point seasons, but their bigger impact of course lies with their physical attributed. Laying the body, winning loose puck battles thanks to their forechecking.

And when talking about depth, you also can't overlook Mark Jankowski who has been another fringe NHL starter who has had a surprise year sticking around in the starting lineup consistently.

To the Canucks credit, they also have quality depth among their forwards. But if we're talking about who is deeper, especially after you include the defensemen, I'm giving the edge to the Predators to grind down the Canucks to push this to six or seven games.

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.

Goaltending

Just another example of why this matchup looks like a toss-up despite the Predators being the wildcard team and the Canucks coming up just shy of having the Western Conference's top seed. You cannot make strong claim that either team has the edge in goaltending.

Juuse Saros has playoff experience under his belt. Not a ton, but 17 games, 10 starts and a .914 save percentage. And that's a combination of relief duty during the Pekka Rinne days, and being the starter in a series that ended in six games to the mightly Carolina Hurricanes in 2021.

In Games 3 and 4 at home against the Hurricanes in 2021, Saros made 52 saves and 58 saves. Now while I don't believe he's going to be forced to make that many saves to win against the Canucks, he will be up against some great goal scorers and shooters.

The Canucks were just 26th in the NHL in shots on goal per game at 28.4, but when the Canucks do get shots on goal they are one of the more accurate teams in the NHL in terms of shooting percentage. They are 2nd in the league, with th Predators at 16th in shooting percentage.

Thatcher Demko has only three starts in his NHL playoff career and is also coming off a long injury that had him sidelined over a month. He has since played two games to finish out the regular season, but gave up three goals on 25 shots against the Jets on the last day of the regular season.

Despite that, Demko is coming off a season where he should be a Vezina Trophy finalist finishing second only to Connor Hellebuyck in Goals Saved Above Expected while managing five shutouts, a .918 save percentage and a 2.45 GAA.

It's going to take quality over quantity to beat Demko more than likely. He's not going to give you easy goals. The Predators will have to be opportunistic on their scoring chances, especially when they have odd man rushes. Same is true for the Canucks when trying to solve Saros.

I'm going to call this another toss-up in terms of who has the edge. The Canucks fans will argue Demko, and Predators fans will mostly say Saros. The answer is, no one really knows until the series unfolds. Both are top tier goalies who can steal a few games in this series.