One week from now, Steven Stamkos will return to Florida to face the Tampa Bay Lightning team that won 681 games during his time there. And, for all we know, he’ll still be in search of his first victory with the Nashville Predators.
Next Monday should be a special night, but it will be a lot harder to wax poetic about all the good times if the current reality is an 0-8-0 start for the Predators.
Currently, Nashville — champions of the off-season — sit 0-5-0 following a 5-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday. To help put the Preds’ awful start in perspective, the Wings are a slightly disappointing 2-3-0 and the only team Detroit has managed to beat — twice — is Nashville.
The Predators are allowing 4.60 goals-against per game, worse than everybody except the leaky Colorado Avalanche (4.83). At the other end of the ice, Nashville is scoring 2.0 goals per game, fewer than every team in the league save Edmonton and San Jose, who are also averaging just a couple per night. The rebuilding Sharks (minus-14) are the only club with a sadder goal differential than Nashville’s minus-13.
The Preds’ team save percentage is a gruesome .849. Again, that’s worse than everybody but their also-unhappy Central Division foes in Colorado (.848). Thirty-five goalies in the NHL have made at least three starts this year and Juuse Saros’ .875 save percentage ranks 27th among them. Scott Wedgewood has started one game and allowed four goals on 20 shots.
And, yes, Stamkos is sitting on a single goal this season — scored in his first game as a Pred — and is presently sporting a dash-six rating.
If you’re looking for something — anything — to put your arms around as a Predators backer, the team’s underlying numbers are at least passable. Nashville’s expected-goals percentage at five-on-five is 49.42, good for 18th in the league.
Hey, we’re grasping at straws here.
The Predators — who have played four of five games at home this year — host the Boston Bruins on Tuesday, which is never an easy assignment. If they can’t pull that one out, they’ll have another chance for victories in Chicago on Friday and at home versus Columbus on Saturday.
If they’re worth anything at all — let alone the roughly $170 million in contracts they handed out to Stamkos, Saros, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei this past summer — Nashville will make it to Tampa with at least one win under its belt.
If not, this big homecoming will be as un-warm and fuzzy as they come.
Weekend Takeaways
• The Tom Wilson train keeps rolling and the Washington Capitals, a team that’s been tough to get a read on the past season or two, look determined to prove last year’s wild-card showing was no fluke. Wilson has scored in all four of the Caps’ games this year, including Washington’s first and final goals during a wild 6-5 overtime victory in New Jersey against the Devils on Saturday. Dylan Strome is soaring with seven points already this year; Alex Ovechkin got off the schneid with his first of the season versus the Devils; John Carlson has four points in four outings from the back end, while 2019 first-rounder Connor McMichael — after an 18-goal showing last year — appears to be taking another offensive step this year with four points in four outings. Washington is the only team to beat the Dallas Stars this year and its other victory came against the Vegas Golden Knights. So far, so good for a team that will need every point it can grab to get back in the big dance.
• The only defenceman since 1992 to record a 100-point campaign is Erik Karlsson, who posted 101 in his final year (2022-23) with the San Jose Sharks. Cale Makar sure looks like he wants to be the second. The Avs got their first two wins of the year on the weekend, beating Anaheim in overtime on Friday and downing the still-winless Sharks on Sunday in San Jose. Makar — after his three-point showing against the Sharks — is up to 12 points in six games, with four multi-point contest already on his statline. That has him knotted with Artemi Panarin and Sam Reinhart for the league scoring lead. A 100-point season is coming for this guy at some point and if he can play 80 games for the first time in his still-fledgling career, this may well be the year.
The Week Ahead
• Nikita Kucherov — who leads the league with seven goals — will face Auston Matthews — the reigning Rocket Richard winner who has goals in each of his past two outings — when the Tampa Bay Lighting visit the Toronto Maple Leafs in the only game on the docket Monday night.
• Why is there just one game Monday night? Because all 32 squads are in action on Tuesday for the NHL’s only full slate of the year. The Caps and Flyers will kick off the staggered-start action at 6 p.m. ET in Philly and we’ll keep it rockin’ through an Original Six matchup in Montreal between the Rangers and Habs (7:15 p.m. ET), the Jets trying to remain the only undefeated team in the league when they visit St. Louis (8 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. CT) and the Kings and Golden Knights closing things out with an 11 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT start in Vegas.
• You don’t need to go out Friday night, as Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid will go head-to-head in Edmonton.
• The Leafs host the Bruins on Saturday as the teams clash for the first time since Boston’s latest playoff triumph over Toronto.
Red and White Power Rankings
1. Winnipeg Jets (5-0-0) What a weekend in Winnipeg. Friday was Connor Hellebuyck night at Canada Life Centre to coincide with the goalie’s 500th start and the home side pumped the Sharks 8-3. Forty-eight hours later — on the day the squad honoured former centre Bryan Little — Winnipeg was lighting up the visiting Penguins 6-3. In all, 11 Jets picked up at least two points on the weekend, led by five-point showings by Vlad Namestnikov, Nik Ehlers and Neal Pionk.
2. Toronto Maple Leafs (3-2-0) Craig Berube will see the team that axed him last year, the St. Louis Blues, when they come to town on Thursday night.
3. Calgary Flames (4-0-1) The goal that sunk them in OT may not have been pretty, but the Flames still haven’t suffered a 60-minute loss this season following a 2-1 extra-time defeat in Seattle on Saturday.
4. Edmonton Oilers (2-4-0) Through six games, Edmonton has allowed fewer than three goals just one time.
5. Vancouver Canucks (2-1-2) How about Kevin Lankinen and his .953 save percentage in three starts as a Canuck? The Finn had things completely boarded up during Saturday’s 3-0 whitewash of the Flyers in Philly.
6. Ottawa Senators (3-2-0) Saturday’s 5-4 win in a back-and-forth affair with Tampa feels that much more crucial of a victory given the Sens set out to visit Utah, Vegas and Colorado this week.
7. Montreal Canadiens (2-3-1) Rookie Emil Heineman is a nice early-season story with two goals so far. The Swede also scored a shootout marker on Long Island on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to avoid a 3-2 defeat at the hands of the Islanders.
