Winning the offseason hasn’t paid off for the Predators

The Nashville Predators suffered another difficult loss Monday night, going down 3-0 to the Los Angeles Kings. The Predators are now 4-7-1, and the team everyone thought won the offseason is struggling to win on the ice.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss the Predators’ sluggish start and how, while it’s still early, it could become “not early” very quickly.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s zero in on the Nashville Predators, Frank. They were on the other end of a 3-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings. We all know about their really slow start to the season, but then they rattled off three wins in a row, they won four out of five, and we thought that everyone could exhale in Smashville.

Then you look at what’s happened in these last couple of games and they’re right back to where they were at the start of the season. They’ve been outshot in three straight, they’ve been outscored 7-1 at five-on-five in those games. They’re 29th in goals for, 24th in goals against.

It’s early, it’s only Nov. 5, and a lot of fanbases will point to last year’s Edmonton Oilers or the 2019 St. Louis Blues and say they could go on a run like that. But it can get late early if they don’t rack up some wins.

Frank Seravalli: That’s how I feel about the Predators. I think this is a team that I’ve ratcheted up my level of concern from a three to a six on a scale of one-to-10. It’s doubled in short order. You see 29th in the league in goals for, I see 32nd in the league in goals for at five-on-five.

The power play has kind of started to figure it out, and maybe that’s a good sign. But Luke Schenn hit the nail on the head after the game, saying he’s not trying to single anyone out, but if you’re relying on Roman Josi to have the most shots in the slot, that’s an indicator of you not doing a good enough job of getting to that area to score.

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