NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Evolution doesn’t happen overnight.
It might be the best explanation for why the Nashville Predators (16-14-6) have fallen woefully short of expectations through their first 36 games this season — spending most nights on the outside of the playoff picture and barely maintaining their hold on a wildcard spot.
The hockey world saw the alterations Predators general manager David Poile made in the off-season — mainly the acquisition of defenceman P.K. Subban, who would become the centrepiece of what could be considered the most dynamic defence core in the NHL — and saw a team that should immediately vault to the upper echelon of the league.
It made sense.
After watching the Pittsburgh Penguins hoist the Stanley Cup on the strength of their seamless transition game and unmatched speed, Poile traded the older, slower Shea Weber for Subban and dropped forwards Eric Nystrom, 33, Paul Gaustad, 34, along with defenceman Barrett Jackman, 35, to give up-and-comers Ryan Johansen, Filip Forsberg, Victor Arvidsson and Ryan Ellis more prominent roles.
The plan was for Nashville to be a possession magnet and have a dominant power play with strong goaltending that could frustrate the best teams in the league. There have been signs it will come to fruition before season’s end, but they’ve been few and far between.
“The bottom line is I know we can be more consistent in every area, whether I’m talking about our forwards, defence or our goaltending,” Poile said Monday. “At different times this season we’ve shown that, but the inconsistency, which is the word, unfortunately, I’ve been using a lot in interviews seems to be plaguing us with our team this year.”
Looking at how things have gone from month to month for Nashville is a perfect example of what Poile’s referring to.
The Predators started with the NHL’s second-worst record in October, going 2-5-1 before turning things around with a 9-3-2 record in November. But they managed just five wins in 14 December games.
Goaltender Pekka Rinne, who struggled in October and December, was the NHL’s player of the month in November.
Up front, James Neal has scored 14 goals in bunches, while Forsberg, who was drafted 11th overall in 2012 and led the team in scoring in each of the last two seasons, scored just two goals in his first 25 games.
On defence, Subban, who got off to a rocky start, has accumulated seven goals and 10 assists in 29 games.
“He does a lot of things on the ice — which is why we acquired him — that I think make him a special hockey player and obviously one of the best skaters in the league,” Poile said. “He does something every game that brings you out of your seat.”
But Subban was held off the scoresheet in the four games that preceded his recent two-week absence from the lineup, and he’s slated to miss up to three more weeks with what’s been reported as a herniated disk in his back.
It’s a heavy loss for a team still trying to find its stride.
“Obviously he’s a big part of our team, he’s a great player,” Ellis said. “But we’ve gotta just go about our business and we gotta start climbing the standings.”
How the Predators have put themselves two points out of the second wildcard spot in the West and seven points back of the St. Louis Blues, who rank third in their division, is perplexing.
Nashville has the NHL’s fourth-best possession stats, its power play is currently ranked 10th overall at 20.3 per cent, and they rank in the top half of the league in both categories of goals-for and goals-against per game.
“We’re one of the worst teams in the league in the first period,” Poile said. “If we could change our second period for our first period and score the first goal of the game, we’d be in a much different place.”
Having a penalty kill fight off more than 81.3 per cent of its opposition’s chances would help, too.
But there has to be more to it than that.
If you’re looking for a common thread between what the team lost in Weber, Nystrom, Gaustad and Jackman, it’s that all of them brought an element of toughness to the equation. They also brought leadership.
Those intangibles have seemingly become secondary in the process of team-building in today’s stat-driven NHL.
“Our direction, like a lot of teams, is going for speed and quickness,” Nashville captain Mike Fisher said.
But it takes more than that to win consistently in this NHL. As far as leadership is concerned, that transition is taking longer than Fisher or anyone else in Nashville would like.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys,” Fisher said. “Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time to feel out where they are in the lineup and what their role is.”
Poile said the team is edging closer to finding its better self.
His thoughts were echoed by head coach Peter Laviolette and by Fisher, who each said that Nashville’s last three games (an overtime loss to Minnesota, a one-goal loss to Chicago and a 4-0 win over St. Louis) were more representative of how they want to play.
The hope has to be that results follow and things quickly change for the better.
