What We Learned: How the Predators turned it around

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

The Nashville Predators weren’t looking so hot headed into the All-Star Break.

They were 24-18-8, with 56 points, and sitting just fifth in the Central Division, seventh in the West overall. One of the things you could point to at that point as being the primary reason they were not exactly looking like a juggernaut was the fact that Pekka Rinne was arguably the least-deserving All-Star in a game featuring John Scott,

The team had a .924 save percentage at 5-on-5 at the time, 20th in the NHL. That’s only about league average, which isn’t good at all for a clear No. 1 goaltender who costs $7 million. More worrying, though, was the fact that Rinne couldn’t make a stop on the PK, with an .832 shorthanded save percentage, the worst of anyone who had played at least 35 games by that time of the season by nearly 20 points. It was tied for the highest number of goals allowed in the league.

That was torpedoing what was otherwise an incredibly praiseworthy season. The Predators were the second-best possession team in the league (53.7 percent CF), one that wasn’t generating a ton of high-quality chances, but was the best in the league at shutting them down. At 5-on-5, their shots-for per 60 was eighth in the league, in the class of a Chicago or Winnipeg. Their shots-against per 60 was first, in a class by itself.

But regardless of what was happening then, what’s happening now, eight weeks or so later, tells a pretty interesting tale: Nashville isn’t much better off in terms of where they currently sit in the standings, but has posted 35 points in its last 25 games. That’s tied for the second-best points total in the Western Conference, behind Anaheim and even with divisional opponent St. Louis. It’s also 12 more than Chicago, which now sits just four points ahead of the Preds.

So why the turnaround? Would you believe that a guy who has consistently been one of the best goalies in the league when healthy finally started playing like it again, while the rest of the team continued to be dominant? While Rinne hasn’t improved much at 5-on-5, his ability to stop pucks while his team is shorthanded has swung significantly in the other direction, and that’s made all the difference.

Before the break, Rinne was a .906 goalie in all situations. Sad!

Since then, he’s .920. And wouldn’t you know it he entered the year as a .919 goaltender for his nearly 400-game career? Shocking.

The Preds entered the All-Star break with a penalty kill running at just 79.1 percent, ahead of only Philly, Winnipeg, Arizona, Calgary and Ottawa. The Flyers are a decent enough team but the other four have been awful basically front-to-back this year. The Panthers were giving up a little more than three power plays a game at that point, and conceded the seventh-most power play goals as a result of their poor percentage. Giving up 32 in 50 may not seem like a lot, but the difference between that and league-average probably cost them two points in the standings.

Since then, the Preds have been taking slightly fewer penalties (a drop of about 0.22 per game) and Rinne has tightened things up to the point that they’ve carried the ninth-best PK in the league. This despite the quality of play in front of him actually getting quite a bit worse.

One might wonder if the difference in team quality can really come down to a swing in shorthanded goaltending, even one this significant, but the answer appears to be an emphatic yes, with a qualification.

The Preds may have gotten better on the PK, but they’ve also gotten worse at 5-on-5, suffering declines in score-adjusted possession numbers, share of high-quality chances, and shot differential. It would be a worrying trend if the team hadn’t gone from a 49.4 percent goals-for team to one that’s running close to 58 percent. Rinne’s marginal improvement obviously helps there, but a group that deserves an even bigger heap of praise in this stretch is the club’s top line of Filip Forsberg, Mike Ribeiro and Craig Smith.

They’ve played a little more than 400 minutes together this year, and absolutely annihilated their opponents. Their combined 29 goals together at 5-on-5 this year is the third-most of any line in the league. While no one’s really talking about any of these guys, they’re tied with the Pavelski-Thornton-Hertl line in San Jose and the Huberdeau-Barkov-Jagr trio in Florida. Those three lines only trail Hornqvist-Crosby-Kunitz (31) and Anisimov-Panarin-Kane (37). But perhaps more important is their nearly 4.4 goals per 60, which is third behind only the Crosby line (an appalling 5.9) and Lucic-Kopitar-Toffoli (4.9).

When this group is on the ice,

It’s important to note here that in addition to Rinne being unable to effectively stop shots on the PK, the Predators were also at a disadvantage because their shooting percentage prior to the All-Star break was a pathetic 6.5 percent. Since then, it’s ballooned to 9.2 percent, an exceedingly high number.

However, one must keep in mind that this comes over the course of the entire season, but that the Predators added a legitimate secondary scoring threat on Jan. 6 when they traded for Ryan Johansen. He had a bit of a slow start in Nashville but has come on gangbusters lately. They’re plus-20 in the goals department since the All-Star break (79-59 in all situations) and his play with James Neal and Calle Jarnkrok in particular has paid huge dividends. They score almost 63 percent of the goals when they’re on the ice as well, almost as many as Smith-Ribeiro-Forsberg, and a second line having that kind of scoring punch effectively renders whatever success their opponent might still be able to gain against the third and fourth lines moot. Not that there’s been much of it to speak of; the Preds wrestle most everyone to a draw at the bottom of the lineup.

As a consequence of all this, you have to understand that the Preds really haven’t missed a beat on the back end with the loss of Seth Jones, and have in fact seen their club take a good-sized step forward with the added scoring punch provided by Johansen. As long as both lines can continue to score, and as long as Rinne remains a serviceable goaltender or better, this is going to be one of those really scary lower seeds that you absolutely don’t want to draw in the first round.

The way things are going, it’s not improbable that they overtake Chicago for the third seed in the Central.

But either way, Nashville will probably be an incredibly tough out for just about anyone.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Rickard Rakell is the latest guy to get work with Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s succeeding like crazy. No one could have seen that kind of thing coming.

Arizona Coyotes: Don Maloney can probably expect a gift basket from Ken Holland any day now.

Boston Bruins: It’s weird that people are psyched about a win against the Leafs, but the Leafs have been playing really well, and the Bruins very much not.

Buffalo Sabres: Hudson Fasching scored this goal on his second NHL shift, which is pretty good. And that’s Jacob Trouba he smokes on the outside, too, which is even better.

Calgary Flames: Jakub Nakladal has been pretty damn good for the Flames since they brought him into the big club. He should be an NHL regular next year.

Carolina Hurricanes: Jeff Skinner is up to 26 goals on the season. Remember all those rumors about how the Hurricanes wanted to trade him like a year or two ago? Yeah that wouldn’t have been smart.

Chicago: Let’s not get too excited. It’s the Flames.

Colorado Avalanche: The Avs are five points out with seven games to play. “Dwindle” is putting it very, very kindly. Who would have supposed that this Colorado team wouldn’t make the playoffs?

Columbus Blue Jackets: Well, shots in this one were 48-19, which tells you everything you need to know, really.

Dallas Stars: Well, it’s not their goaltending.

Detroit Red Wings: No one wants to win the final wild card spot. Give it to the Senators or something.

Edmonton Oilers: Is there anything this kid can’t do?

Florida Panthers: The Cats are now 4-0 against Tampa this year, and well, that helps.

Los Angeles Kings: But I thought the Kings were one of those teams who could just flip a switch and Play The Right Way whenever they wanted to. Maybe they don’t want to right now. I don’t know.

Minnesota Wild: This race is over. Why are we still talking about this?

Montreal Canadiens: Yeah, yikes.

Nashville Predators: Ryan Johansen: “I wish I was still a Blue Jacket.” UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Okay, he added, “And since they didn’t believe that I could be a big piece of the franchise in Columbus any more, I love being a Nashville Predator.” But still!

New Jersey Devils: Scott Wedgewood, goalie of the future. Trade Schneider.

New York Islanders: This was a huge, huge win for this club. They entered Sunday just a point out of third in the division, but four up on the drop line.

New York Rangers: Three in a row for the Rangers likely ensures that they’ll stay firmly in their divisional playoffs and not finish in the wild card. But that probably means they get the Penguins in the first round, and well, I wouldn’t want to do that.

Ottawa Senators: This is Sens hockey, baby.

Philadelphia Flyers: If Claude Giroux is anything less than 100 percent down this final stretch, that’s a major concern.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Good lord this was scary. Pittsburgh might be the best team in the league right now. Who slows them down?

San Jose Sharks: Yeah I wouldn’t worry too much about this team clinching a playoff spot. They’re up 13 on the next-closest team in the division. It’s fine.

St. Louis Blues: Might wanna cover this guy.

Tampa Bay Lightning: That sound Tampa residents heard all weekend if they kept their windows open was Steve Yzerman screaming for 48 straight hours.

Toronto Maple Leafs: These guys are approximately 600,000 percent smarter than the regime that preceded them.

Vancouver Canucks: The Canucks have two goals in their last five games. They’ve been shut out nine times in 74 games. That’s almost one in every eight. Yikes.

Washington Capitals: Just not a great performance from the Caps in this one. Or the one before that. Or the one two games before that. I’m sensing a trend here.

Winnipeg Jets: Turns out giving Ondrej Pavelec 26 starts is not wise.

Play of the Weekend

Remember how the Rangers have regularly given Tanner Glass playing time instead of JT Miller this year? Haha what a league.

Gold Star Award