On a positive, the Canes are actually a respectable 10-15-2 when they fail to get 20 shots on net. Bridgestone Arena will be packed and Preds fans excited about a team that finished with 104 points last season, the third-best total in franchise history.
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It’s an exciting season in Smashville, not only due to the expectations on this team, but also because All-Star weekend is being hosted in Nashville the last week in January. Carolina defenseman James Wisniewski departed the game in the first period with a lower-body injury and didn’t return.NOTES: Carolina’s scratches were C Brad Malone and D Michal Jordan…. And while everyone can agree that it didn’t take long for the Preds to pick up the new system at 5-on-5, it was just as apparent that the power play was a huge Achilles’ heel for them. It was his first game with at least two assists since December. 30, 2013.
AGING CENTERS: The Predators’ top two lines will be centered by a pair of 35-year-olds in Ribeiro and Fisher after Nashville signed each forward to two-year deals. His franchise-record 36 shutouts rank third in the National Hockey League over the past seven seasons, behind only the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist (38) and Jonathan Quick (37) of Los Angeles.
The Preds’ second goal came on a double deflection.
Center Craig Smith did the honors, scoring the Predators’ first goal for the second straight season on a tip-in of defenseman Ryan Ellis’ shot at 2:23.
After the goal horn went off, Arvidsson celebrated the milestone goal with a Tiger Woods-style fist pump.
It’s hard to really get a good feel of how a season will go based on just 60 minutes of hockey, but preliminary observations of this Predators team lead me to believe that Nashville could be a very productive – and very defensively stingy team – throughout the season. They’ve failed to qualify in eight of the last nine seasons since winning their only Stanley Cup in 2005-06. “I would love nothing more than to get back and do that all over again, and not only do it again, do it here”. Players have credited their comfort with each other for the early season turnaround. “Now we can work from this, and I think we can play a little bit better, but we got the win and that’s what counts”. Carolina comes to town with a rebuild in process after an exceedingly disappointing 2014-15 campaign that saw the Canes finish last in the Metropolitan Division, 27 points out of a playoff spot. One said to me, “Well you have a title for your article, ‘Picking up Where They Left off a year ago.'” I pondered that and thought to myself that I did not really want to write something like that.
Staal and Ward, though, are entering the final season of their respective contracts so a slow start for Carolina will likely lead to trade speculation. I get that. What I don’t get is how that can be something lacking throughout a season. Neal’s 23 goals in 67 games previous year were nothing to sneeze at, but Poile is asking more of a guy who’s demonstrated an elite scoring ability at different times in his career.
With a new season comes new faces, and in the case of the Hurricanes, a few of the new names aren’t very big ones.
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Carolina hopes to avoid a repeat of last season when it opened 0-6-2 before notching its first win November. 1.
