What was the biggest surprise to the Predators’ start to the season?

After a splashy offseason, the Nashville Predators were the biggest disappointment in The NHL in a disastrous 2024-25 campaign.

They weren’t close to missing the playoffs, and it set up a high-stakes season this year. The early returns were more of the same. The Predators stumbled hard out of the gate, and while they’ve recovered in a considerable way recently, they still look like a long-shot to make the playoffs at 24-23-5 in a crowded Western Conference wild card race.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by former Predators goalie and current NHL analyst Chris Mason to discuss where things went wrong for Nashville to start the year.

Tyler Yaremchuk: “It’s been a really interesting season so far for the Nashville Predators, a team who coming into this season everyone was really curious kind of which way would it go. Would all these veterans sort of bounce back? Would they find a way to get into the playoff mix, or could this be a bottoming out type of year? Well, they found a way to stay in the hunt here. There’s a long list of guys who had really good years in Nashville, but I guess where I want to start this is: What’s at the top of your list when it comes to things that have been the most surprising for you this season in Nashville?”

Chris Mason: “I think at the beginning of the year, I think the way that they finished last year there was a lot of optimism back in in the group and everybody thought, ‘Okay We kind of figured it out.’ Stamkos got acclimated. Marchessault had a good half. Ryan O’Reilly, obviously as consistent as they come in the game and so I think that the start this season was really surprising to me how they came out of the gate so slow… I think at the beginning of the year they were really trying to focus on their defensive play, and in turn it really hurt their rush game and their ability to score goals, and it just seemed like you know, this this team was just destined to to be blown up at the trade deadline and then they figured it out. They got the defensive stuff down, and they started creating chances on the rush. The power play has been really good for them, a good solid source of offense.”

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…