Before the playoffs even began, fans around the hockey world were circling a potential second round matchup between Nashville and Winnipeg that everyone wanted to see. This series has been almost pre-destined since the mid-way point of the regular season.
This clash of titans provided us with some of the best games of the entire regular season and everyone is hoping the series lives up to that hype.
But aside from how entertaining it’s bound to be, which team has the edge?
I like to look at the second half of the NHL season when comparing playoff teams. Not because the first half doesn’t matter at all, it’s just slightly less relevant to the way teams are currently playing. Since these teams have both already played a series, that’s relevant information too, but we’ll get to that later.
After the return of Ryan Ellis to the lineup, the Predators went on an absolute tear for the rest of the regular season, while the Jets remained as excellent in the second half as they were in the first.
The Predators were more effective at getting their scoring chances on net and attacking off the rush, while the Jets generated more pre-shot movement and more scoring chances overall. The Jets are specifically very good at generating chances by cycling the puck down low and finding one-timer options in the middle of the ice from either behind the net or behind the goal line from the corner, and by forechecking teams into making mistakes.
Defensively, the Predators were a little exposed by the Colorado Avalanche and showed a weakness in defending off the rush, but luckily for them, the Jets don’t attack off the rush very often. The Predators’ vaunted top-four on defence is quite good at breaking up cycles and evading forechecking forwards to initiate clean breakouts.
That will be something to watch in the Predators’ end, to see if the Jets are able to establish their trademark meat grinder of a forecheck and extend offensive zone possessions off the cycle.
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In the Jets’ end of the ice, Nashville has excelled more than any other team in the league at generating second chance opportunities in close. This is likely because a larger than average percentage of their shots come from their defencemen, and the forwards all know where to go to get those rebound chances.
The Jets, meanwhile, allowed opponents to recover the third-fewest rebounds in their zone of any team in the league this year. It appears on paper that both these teams are strong at defending the other’s biggest offensive strengths, which is really interesting.
Defensively, the Jets were better at keeping scoring chances and pre-shot movement down than the Predators were this season, which might give them the edge in this series. But goaltending is always a huge factor as well, and Pekka Rinne lead the league in save percentage – but the gap between he and Hellebuyck in high danger save percentage was .814 for Rinne, and .813 for Hellebuyck.
Another storyline heading into the series is that the Jets looked dominant in their entire series against the Minnesota Wild, while the Predators, until Game 6, were pretty soundly outplayed by an Avalanche team no one gave much of a chance.
The Predators will need to elevate their game to a degree we haven’t seen in a while in order to match the Jets’ intensity. Logically, based on the games between these teams we’ve already seen, that shouldn’t be an issue, but if the Predators get too complacent and try to run all their offence through their defence like they did against the Avalanche, they’ll be in trouble.
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