The Week That Was: Week 4

This was another good week for the Nashville Predators.

Big bucks, no whammies:

The Fast Money Round

Tuesday: Predators 4, Vegas Golden Knights 1

Secondary scoring showed up — in a big way. Ryan Hartman nearly set Bridgestone Arena on fire. It wasn’t always pretty, but it got the job done. Vegas isn’t playing as well now that some of their key guys got paid, and the Golden Knights will have an uphill climb in the Pacific Division. They’re not a bad team by any means, but their slow start may ultimately cost them later on.

Thursday: Predators 4, Tampa Bay Lightning 1

*plays “Welcome Back, Kotter” theme song*

Perhaps it was the perfect game for Pekka Rinne to return from injury. He needed to be tested early and he was. Meanwhile, Kyle Turris probably used some voodoo on a deflection for the first goal, while Ryan Johansen went into passing wizard mode twice. Nashville withstood the Tampa barrage in a game that wasn’t always as pretty as the highlights suggest.

Saturday: Predators 1, Boston Bruins 0

The Pekka Rinne hat trick returned — he signed a contract extension, got a shutout and celebrated his birthday all on the same day. Brad Marchand didn’t lick anybody, but he did quite the acting job after getting a penalty and won himself a double minor, plus a misconduct penalty all in the span of four seconds. Also, Roman Josi did his best Bobby Orr impression.

Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

Player of the Week

This is easily the hardest choice to make of the first month. Ryan Hartman drank whatever got into Filip Forsberg the week before, and Pekka Rinne returned from injured reserve to play two outstanding games against Eastern Conference powers. Both are deserving, but only one can take home the crown. Hartman gets one heck of an honorable mention, but we’ll gift-wrap this one for Rinne as a late birthday present.

Favorite thing of the Week

There was plenty of cool stuff on Halloween, but the Charlotte Checkers get the nod here, for obvious reasons:

Concern of the Week

You all know what goes here this week. It’s not rocket science, but the Preds are seemingly making their power play much harder than it really needs to be. Some folks on Twitter are saying it’ll get better because of the law of averages, but here’s the thing — there has to be an effort to change things up in order to improve, because teams have them figured out right now. They’re around 13 percent on the season and they’re going to stay there unless they actively take a different approach.

The 5-on-5 play has been great, but there will be lulls and having even decent special teams will help when those bumps in the road happen. The penalty kill has markedly improved in recent games, now it’s time for the power play to do the same. There’s too much talent on the ice with the man advantage for it to be this bad.

Scheduling Quirk of the Week

This one doesn’t involve Nashville, but it does involve the team in immediate pursuit: Winnipeg. The Jets just finished their back-to-back set with Florida on Friday in Finland, but they won’t play again until this coming Friday. The Panthers, meanwhile, return to action on Thursday. Gotta get that jet lag out, I guess.

Plus/minus

Taking the good with the bad from the previous week, in chronological order:

Plus: spoofing the Vegas pregame show, because it’s already old and tired

Minus: Gnash’s guitar not breaking on contact

Minus: Nick Bonino

Plus: Ryan Hartman

Plus: Juuse Saros’ work during Rinne’s absence

Minus: Too much man

Plus: Those shorthanded chances, yo

Plus: Fiala to Hartman x2

Minus: Ryan Ellis killing off the power play with a penalty of his own

Plus: Jarnkrok getting in on the act

Plus: Arvy hustle gets another goal

Plus: Turris doing some trick shot magic on that deflection

Plus: Joey...that pass...Josi...that finish

Plus: another gem from Joey

Minus: Tampa controlling everything...

Plus: ...except the scoreboard. Thanks Rinne. Oh, and welcome back.

Plus: Rinne’s extension does wonders for the cap situation.

Minus: All the hooking calls. So many hooking calls. It’s like the league told the officials to look for it or something.

Plus: Sissons drawing a high sticking call on Marchand.

Plus: Marchand doing more damage to his cause by going all drama queen on his way to the box.

Minus: The power play is still bad.

Plus: Shorthanded chances!

Plus: A birthday shutout for Rinne!

This week’s grade

Clearly a better week than last week. Despite the power play’s struggles, the Predators are playing well and have the top spot in the league. Hartman’s playing his best hockey right now, Rinne’s healthy and in great form right now, and they’re beating good teams right now. Things are looking fairly good. Only thing keeping this from the best possible grade is the way Tampa controlled things for most of Thursday’s contest. Hopefully Viktor Arvidsson returns soon. Final grade for the week: A

Your turn: Which do you think is a bigger problem — the Preds’ power play or the third defensive pairing? Sound off in the comments.