What We Learned: Inside the Predators' road to ruin

After a very slow start, the Predators have at least gotten back to respectability.

Heading into the season, most people considered them a titan of the league. Predictions of Presidents’ Trophies and perhaps even Stanley Cups wouldn’t have been considered out of line back in September. But then they stumbled out of the gate, losing eight of their first 11 games, and people understandably started to get worried.

Was Pekka Rinne going to sink this for them? Was PK Subban fitting in okay? Was this offense ever going to figure it out?

A little more than two weeks later and there’s not as much to worry about: Entering Sunday’s game at Winnipeg, they’d won 14 of the last 18 points available to them, and looked great doing it, conceding just 10 goals across eight of their nine games (and six in the other, which is weird but it happens).

But while it was a little tough to wade through in the early goings of the season, a clear pattern is emerging: The Predators struggle on the road like few other teams in the league. Their 2-7-2 record (after losing to Winnipeg) in road games this year ties them with Arizona for third-worst in the league ahead of only the Leafs and Islanders, two teams with problems of their own.

Certainly, it’s not something we’d have expected from a team this good, and it’s therefore something that requires investigation.

The quickest caveat you could have here is that it’s not apparently Rinne’s fault: He’s a .935 goalie on the season, which is clearly as good as you could possibly hope for from anyone. Of course, that’s .935 through a .953 save percentage at home, and a roughly league-average .917 at home.

And what’s interesting is that in a some ways, the Predators are better away from Bridgestone Arena than at it. Things like shots, attempts, unblocked attempts, and so on look better on the road than at home, even after adjusting for the fact that they get outscored on a pretty regular basis when they’re away.

But here’s the thing: While they actually have smallish deficits for those stats at home and similarly small leads on the road, that’s not the case when it comes to controlling the quality of shots being taken. Their scoring chance numbers are actually strong regardless of venue (57.6 percent in Nashville, 52.9 percent away from it).

You can see where there’s an issue emerging there: While they’re generating more a decent amount of high-quality looks in all venues, they concede a lot more on the road (6.7 per 60 at home, 8.8 away). Part of that is to be expected, of course; when you have the benefit of last change you’re going to use it to your advantage, at least in theory.

This isn’t going to shock you or anything, but while conceding higher-quality shots in road venues is a big problem, the goaltending hasn’t been up to the challenge, either. The Preds are stopping just .911 at 5-on-5 away from home, which is far too low to keep you competitive no matter how much you’re out-chancing your opponents. (This is to say nothing of the absurd .951 at home, which has certainly buoyed their record overall.)

Here’s where all the unblocked attempts they’ve given up have come from, and you can see a clear problem that emerges away from Nashville:

Obviously, that’s plenty of goals from outside the “home plate” area, including a few bad-angle jobs that goalies really shouldn’t concede in this day and age. I do think part of that is Rinne just isn’t a very good goalie who has gotten incredibly lucky at home this year, but more to the point, look at what backup Marek Mazanec has done in his three starts, all of which were against decent teams in their home buildings: He’s just .809 this year in three appearances, giving up 13 goals to Anaheim, Chicago, and Toronto. It really doesn’t help when your backup is barely stopping 80 percent of the shots he faces.

But the other problem is that the shooting percentages are working against them on the road too, as Preds outfield players aren’t performing what they “should” either. Just 6.2 percent on the road versus a slightly-too-high 10 percent at home is going to leave you looking at some apparent offensive struggles, even if they’re getting to the quality areas.

They’re just not burying their chances as efficiently as they ought to. Over the course of a season, that works itself out. I’m not sure it does when it comes to goaltending, simply because it’s tough to believe goaltending is a positive force for them at this point.

Finally, it’s also worth mentioning that their home/road splits are particularly apparent on special teams. While the power play is pretty good regardless of where it’s operating, the Predators have really gotten everything to go their way at home while they’re a man short. And when I say “everything,” I mean that literally. Nashville’s opponents haven’t scored on the power play in Bridgestone, going 0-fer on 35 shots. That’ll help you win a whole hell of a lot of games.

And then on the road, they have the third-worst PK in the league, giving up nine goals on 55 shots. That, too, is going to heavily affect game outcomes.

The good news is that these are all short-term quirks. No one goes 72 percent on the PK on the road over 41 games, and no one goes 100 percent at home. Few teams out-chance their opponents as broadly as the Predators have regardless of venue and concede more goals than they score.

There are still legitimate questions to ask about the quality of their goalies, and Nashville has to be praying Vegas comes along to expansion-draft Rinne away from them this summer. But in the meantime, the goaltending being the biggest part of their winning and losing is likely to continue.

Not that anyone expected differently.

That’s not to pin all their road struggles on goaltending alone, but if your home/road goaltending split is .962/.894, you’re gonna see some wild swings in results. Both those numbers will move toward the league average in the next several months, and we’ll start to get the full measure of what the Preds truly “are” but right now, if you’re trying to figure out why they look so mediocre overall, that’s why.

It’s nice to have your goalies be almost unbeatable at home, but you’d like them to be competent away from it.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: It’d be nice to have Ryan Getzlaf scoring. He only has two goals so far this year! Luckily the Pacific is such a disaster.

Arizona Coyotes: Yeah, wins, losses, who cares. Those throwback jerseys are magnificent! And I say that as someone who really likes the Coyotes’ home shirts a lot.

Boston Bruins: If Brandon Carlo can play well away from Zdeno Chara, that’s a strong middle-pairing addition to the Bruins’ blue line going forward. One wonders how that goes long-term though.

Buffalo Sabres: The Sabres are underperforming their expected-goals offensively. Although you have to say without Jack Eichel that’s not really much of a surprise, is it?

Calgary Flames: “We’re good cuz we’re pushing and shoving after the whistle.” I bet that’s a philosophy that holds up all season. But at least Brian Burke is happy.

Carolina Hurricanes: Well good news, buddy: They’re not.

Chicago: I will always like a story about the friendship between a starter and backup goaltender. And apparently Scott Darling likes screamo. That rules.

Colorado Avalanche: I feel so bad for everyone who went to this game.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Tough to imagine too many people saw this one coming.

Dallas Stars: Who could have foreseen that “too many goals against” would be the Stars’ big problem this year?

Detroit Red Wings: Swapping out Nik Kronwall for Xavier Ouellet is a good idea regardless of your injury situation.

Edmonton Oilers: If you had a billion dollars to wager on “Why does Don Cherry think the Oilers are good now?” an answer of “they hit people” was as solid a bet as any.

Florida Panthers: Starting to look like Aleksander Barkov is a shootout master.

Los Angeles Kings: I’m not an art critic but it seems to me this is a bad sculpture.

Minnesota Wild: This is what the kids are into these days folks.

Montreal Canadiens: You’re not gonna believe this but Carey Price of all people stole a game for these guys.

Nashville Predators: Having James Neal and Ryan Ellis on the IR isn’t a good development either.

New Jersey Devils: How dare this website say something like this?

New York Islanders: Yeah we know.

New York Rangers: I’ve said it a bunch already but the first 20-something games of the season aren’t the test of whether the Rangers are for real. Once the weight of having to carry the puck themselves hits this strong forward group around Game 50, that will be the thing.

Ottawa Senators: I can figure out the Senators pretty easy here: They’re bad.

Philadelphia Flyers: It’s still 2016, right?

Pittsburgh Penguins: How are we not talking more about Sid Crosby leading the league in goalscoring with 15 in 16 games? That rules. But he only has five assists? Try passing it Sid!

San Jose Sharks: “Murphy’s Law appears to be haunting the Sharks as they approach the quarter pole of the season. And yet, they’re right in the thick of things.” Welcome to the Pacific, guys.

St. Louis Blues: Well if you’re going to take the fourth-most penalties in the league, I guess having the third-best PK is a good baseline.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Man, I dunno. Feels like maybe they should get rid of Ben Bishop and let Vasilevskiy run the show from here out. What’s that you say? That’s already the plan? Hmm. Interesting.

Toronto Maple Leafs: The Leafs allegedly suspended Garret Sparks for threatening to beat up a guy who was making fun of a disabled person in an insensitive fashion. Weird regressive/progressive dynamic there.

Vancouver Canucks: When your goalie needs to steal you a game against the Avs, you’re in rough shape. But not as rough as the team that struggled to score against the Canucks.

Vegas Golden Knights: Wait, some locals might be mad the team dumped the “Las” part of “Las Vegas?” Hilarious. “What’s lost in the argument is that Foley plans on selling massive quantities of memorabilia to tourists and will flip that money into building a first-class, winning franchise.” Wait a second folks I thought they weren’t going to rely on tourist dollars?!

Washington Capitals: Braden Holtby really didn’t like losing to the Leafs.

Winnipeg Jets: Starting to look like you gotta fire the coach.

Play of the Weekend

This looked like a better scoring chance than it actually was.

Gold Star Award

You definitely wanna be the guy who scores the Teddy Bear Toss goal. That’s gotta feel great.

Minus of the Weekend

Corey Crawford hurt his foot at a Rise Against show a few years ago and he’s calling out Scott Darling for listening to Pg.99 or whatever? C’mon bro.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “Sureves” wants people to lose their minds.

To Ottawa:

Auston Matthews

Morgan Rielly

To Toronto:

Erik Karlsson

Marc Methot

Signoff

Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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