Daily Faceoff Live: The Predators and Blues come back from the dead

Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna talked about the mid-season resurrection of the Nashville Predators and St. Louis Blues on the latest episode of Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: Mike, I wanted to talk about the Western Conference standings because it seems like there’s been a bit of shift here in the last 10 days or so, since the calendar flipped to 2023. I’m wondering if we wrote off two teams in the St. Louis Blues and the Nashville Predators too soon. You look at their marks, both teams are 4-1 in January. The Blues beat the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night, coming back from a multi-goal deficit.

When you look at the Preds, they lost their first loss of the calendar year 2023 to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday but it was a solid game. And so we kind of viewed both teams through the prism of the sellers standpoint, as in when it comes to talking about the deadline which is 51 days away. But, if you had to pick one at this moment that’s going to get themselves back in the race, which they’re both squarely in on a points and points percentage basis, which team would you give the edge?

Mike McKenna: It’s slight, but I go to St. Louis between the two “zombie teams” I like to call them. They’ve been back from the dead here. The reason being for Nashville, Juuse Saros and Filip Forsberg are the main reason why that club survived the December to get to the point now where they are winning games. And like you said, they were good against the Leafs, good against the Caps a couple of games ago.

But you’re going to have to see more from Tanner Jeannot and Ryan Johansen from that lineup to really go. I’m not sure if there is as much room for growth for Nashville as there is with St. Louis. And one of the bigger areas with St. Louis is they’re growing as a power-play, since the start of 2023, they’re leading the NHL.

You can watch the rest of the episode here…