The Nashville Predators look to build off a triumphant win against the Chicago Blackhawks tonight against the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs will be a much tougher opponent. While Captain Gabe Landeskog is still out of commission this season, they’ve been getting plenty done without him.
Cale Makar leads the team in points with 24 and assists with 20, while Mikko Rantanen has notched 11 goals to become the standout goal-scoring leader. We’ll see Ryan Johansen today; he’s tied with Nate MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin, and Ross Colton for second on the team in goals scored, with six. It’s good to see he bounced back well from his season-ending injury last year, but it’d be better to see if he weren’t playing for a division rival.
Starter Alexandar Georgiev has struggled this season, putting up a .890 over 14 starts and doing a little worse than might be expected. He’s still won 10 of those 14 starts, thanks to fantastic play from the team in front of him. Backup Ivan Prosvetov hasn’t done much better.
The Avs have combined great offense, great defense, and good special teams with mediocre luck and bad goaltending. When they’ve lost, it’s tended to be in blowouts; when they’ve won, it’s rarely been close. Other than their goaltending they have no particular salient weaknesses, with a good PK and a barely-below-average PP; if anything, it’s surprising they haven’t scored, and won, more.
This will be a hard fight for the Preds, but a very satisfying win if they can manage it. The game airs at 7PM Central on Bally Sports South and 102.5 The Game.