The Daily Faceoff Show: Which wildcard team should top teams be afraid of?

Matt Larkin and Mike McKenna took some inbox questions on The Daily Faceoff Show today, with the most interesting of those being: which wildcard team scares them the most come playoff time?

Mike McKenna: I think the Nashville Predators do. This is a team that to me plays a pretty hard, direct style, they’re in your face. You’ve got Tanner Jeannot and Michael McCarron bringing things on the fourth line. They’ve willed the rest of the club into the fight, and I think John Hynes has them playing a style that could do damage in the playoffs.

They can play tight games, they’re always in it, and I think that when you look at their record against top teams in the Western Conference, that’s when Nashville’s played their best. They haven’t rolled over for teams, they’ve been in these games for the large part of the season.

I think beyond that, there’s the Juuse Saros factor. Other wildcard teams, we’re talking potentially Washington, Dallas, Boston, there’s still question marks there in goal in terms of experience and what they’ve done in the regular season. I have no question marks with Saros. He can steal games, and I think he can steal an entire series.

Larkin: That’s bang on. This is crazy, you look at the graphic here, the parody in the NHL is like, they say “Just get in”, and it’s so true. We saw the Predators (made the Stanley Cup final) as a 16th seed in 2017, Montreal had the 18th best record last year, and now I think you have to be terrified about these Vegas Golden Knights. Doing their LTIR games, whatever they’re doing, it’s within the rules, you can’t fault them, we talked about it yesterday.

But now, they’ve got some sort of narrative momentum peaking. Jack Eichel’s finally healthy, Robin Lehner is back, relatively healthy, Mark Stone’s back, you’ve got the Evgenii Dadonov storyline where he’s back from the dead, revived. And you can feel the sort of juju, Shea Theodore I think is really stepping up his game as well, coming up with some big goals on defense.

And I just would be frustrated if I’m a top seed in the West and you have to play Vegas as your reward for everything you did in the season. And a team that a lot of people would have picked to run away with the Pacific Division. They could still peak when it matters, so I think that’s a team you really have to watch out for.”

You can watch the full episode here…