Predators go from underdog to favourite
NASHVILLE The moment the Predators have been waiting for since June 11 is finally here.
After failing to force a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup final, Nashville is back in the post-season eager to chase hockey ’s ultimate prize once again.
This time, the Predators are the Presidents’ Trophy winners entering their first-round series starting Thursday night at home against the Colorado Avalanche.
Nashville forward Filip Forsberg sees the NHL’s best in the regular season as a better team than the group that made a thrilling run to the franchise’s first final as the lowest-seeded team in last year’s playoffs.
“Same group of guys, same great mindset, great mentality in this group, but we’re a more skilled team,” Forsberg said. “Everyone who was here last year is a year older, a year better, and all the guys that they brought in have been great additions and really created a big impact on this team.”
Winning the Presidents’ Trophy is no guarantee of success: Since 2004-05, more teams with the most regular-season points (four) have been eliminated in the first round than have reached the final (three). And the Avalanche enter with confidence after their amazing turnaround led to their first playoff berth since 2014 — even if the Avalanche have lost 10 straight to Nashville.
“We got in,” forward Nathan MacKinnon said. “Anything can happen now. We’re excited for the challenge. It’s not going to be easy against the Presidents’ (Trophy) winning team.”
Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said the Predators won’t take anybody lightly.
“We’re disappointed obviously the way things ended last year,” Laviolette said. “We put ourselves in position to finish it off, and we didn’t get it done. We wanted to give ourselves the best position that we can through the course of the regular season in order to be successful, and we made it. We’re here.”
Some things to know about the Predators-Avalanche series:
The Avalanche have one of the youngest rosters with an average age of just 25.8. This season, they dressed 11 different rookies.
Nobody spent more time in the penalty box than the undisciplined Predators, who led the NHL with 928 penalty minutes at an average of 11.3 minutes per game. They led the league with 320 minor penalties and 10 misconducts and tied San Jose with the most game misconducts (four).
Colorado’s top line of captain Gabriel Landeskog, MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen had a combined 243 points, which accounted for 36 per cent of the team’s scoring in the regular season. The speedy MacKinnon led the way with 39 goals and 97 points. They’ll likely be matched against Nashville’s top line of Forsberg, who led Nashville with 64 points, centre Ryan Johansen (54) and Viktor Arvidsson (61).
The Predators have a big advantage in Pekka Rinne, a threetime Vezina Trophy finalist who could finally win the award after a career-high eight shutouts and 42 wins this season. Colorado will be without Semyon Varlamov this series because of a knee injury, putting Jonathan Bernier in net. Bernier went 19-13-0 for Colorado with two shutouts,