Nashville Predators Look to Exploit Blackhawks PK
The Nashville Predators hope to open their season by putting the rival Chicago Blackhawks in an 0-3 hole.
The Nashville Predators were afforded the opportunity to sit back and watch their opening night opponents, the Chicago Blackhawks, drop the first nationally televised game of the season to the St. Louis Blues Wednesday night, 5-2.
The Preds will crack open their schedule with back to back games on Friday and Saturday night against the rival Hawks, and last night’s showing should have exposed some things that they feel they can take advantage of.
Namely, if the Blackhawks feel like scoring on themselves, don’t get in their way. Let them have at it. At this point in the season Chicago sits squarely in last place, putting 2 goals into their opponent’s net and 1 into their own.
Meanwhile the Chicago Blackhawks just Scored on their own net 😂❌ … #BadLuck pic.twitter.com/Xzr7grWoGg
— Bar South N Celly™ (@BarSouthNCelly) October 13, 2016
From Nashville’s perspective, the eyes will slide over to that special teams category. St. Louis was able to grab 3 goals on 5 Power Play opportunities against the Hawks- helped out by Chicago’s decision to form a congo line to the penalty box late in the second period, providing ample 5-on-3 time.
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And what have the Nashville Predators been trying to improve? Maybe something that involved snagging an elite puck-moving defender in P.K. Subban? Ahh yes, here it is- the Power Play.
Subban and Co. should have the chance to prove themselves an improved unit, and they will need to. The Blackhawks will not want to drop more points to teams within their division and will be pushing hard to spoil P.K.’s debut in gold.
It will be interesting to see whether Subban and Roman Josi are paired together on the PP unit to form one ultimate blue-line tag team, or if they will be split in order to keep one fully-capable quarterback on the ice for the duration of penalty time.
Either way the unit will have a wholly different look without Shea Weber and the “Set-Up-the-Boomstick-at-All-Costs” strategy. It certainly wasn’t a bad concept, but the Nashville Predators should have a considerably more unpredictable approach with their current roster.
Will it lead to improvement? We’ll just have to tune in to see.
Friday night Bridgestone Arena will be rocking, hopefully to a tune that will have the Blackhawks doing the conga again. It’s great to have hockey back.
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