When the Nashville Predators dropped Game 1 in Vancouver on Sunday night, people–understandably–brought out the history. The Preds have yet to win a series after losing Game 1; they’re 0-12 (0-13 if you count the best-of-five qualifying round during the bubble in 2020).
Why Winning Game 1 Matters
Winning Game 1 matters because, well, you have a series lead.
Often, the better team wins a hockey game; many times, the better team wins a best-of-seven series. There’s a very strong correlation, in general, between winning Game 1 and winning the series, but that’s because it’s always better to be leading than trailing. Winning the first game to win the series works on the same principle as scoring the first goal to win the game–they’re both hard to come by.
Dropping the first game in a best-of-seven series might mean you’re completely outmatched, or it might mean you got unlucky, or it might be somewhere between the two. It’s not a prophecy, or a curse.
The Preds’ History
So how bad is 0-12 in series where you drop the first game, really?
To some extent, a team’s record–especially its loss record–can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think Bruce Boudreau, who coached both the Washington Capitals and the Anaheim Ducks during eras when they really struggled to close out a series, is a great example of that: he has a very bad poker face, and by the time he was with the Ducks he got visibly rattled in games before his teams completely fell apart in them.
These aren’t John Hynes’s Preds, or Peter Laviolette’s–and while they are Barry Trotz’s, they’re the Preds Barry Trotz built as GM after finally breaking the Washington Capitals’ painful Cup drought, not the scrappy bunch of misfits he was coaching with a string and a prayer as Nashville’s first head coach. So, first off, let’s not write Andrew Brunette’s team off just yet.
Secondly, there are a lot of ways to lose a NHL series. Let’s take a look at the ones the Preds have dropped.
- 2004: First round — lost in 6 to the Detroit Red Wings.
- 2006: First round — lost in 5 to the San Jose Sharks (won first game).
- 2007: First round — lost in 5 to the San Jose Sharks.
- 2008: First round — lost in 6 to the Detroit Red Wings.
- 2010: First round — lost in 6 to the Chicago Blackhawks (won first game).
- 2011: Second round — lost in 6 to the Vancouver Canucks.
- 2012: Second round — lost in 5 to the Phoenix Coyotes.
- 2015: First round — lost in 6 to the Chicago Blackhawks.
- 2016: Second round — lost in 7 to the San Jose Sharks.
- 2017: Cup Final — lost in 6 to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
- 2018: Second round — lost in 7 to the Winnipeg Jets.
- 2019: First round — lost in 6 to the Dallas Stars.
- 2021: First round — lost in 6 to the Carolina Hurricanes.
- 2022: First round — lost in 4 to the Colorado Avalanche.
One interesting fact I noticed while putting together this list was just how many of the Preds’ victorious opponents have gotten at least one piece of hardware out of that postseason. The Detroit Red Wings in 2008, Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 and 2015, Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017, and Colorado Avalanche in 2022 all lifted the Stanley Cup. While they didn’t quite manage that, the Vancouver Canucks in 2011 and San Jose Sharks in 2016 both at least made the Final.
Furthermore, while the Phoenix Coyotes in 2012, Dallas Stars in 2019, and Carolina Hurricanes in 2021 didn’t actually make the Final–and so it’s hard to say exactly how far they would have fared against other opponents–they did each lose to the eventual Cup champion.
This is a pretty impressive list, and makes it clear that the Preds have faced some strong opponents in their playoff history. Some of these losses might just be about being the almost-right team in the wrong time and place.
Matchups Matter
For most of the Preds’ first and most recent playoff appearances, they were a team that struggled to excel. They had great goaltending and–at best–one or two star skaters. They’ve played well but by committee, which works well in the regular season but often collapses in the postseason, or they’ve relied entirely on Vezina-caliber goaltending and shaky defense, which has gotten exposed under the spotlight of higher-stakes play.
They’ve also played against a murderer’s row of opponents in a top-tier Central Division and Western Conference, often facing the same teams over and over–and sometimes just plain matching up poorly against them. Every skater has that one goalie they can’t consistently score on, and every goalie has that one team that rattles them. Special teams and coaching styles also serve as interlocking pieces in any matchup.
Some of the series that the Preds have lost they probably just were not going to win, regardless of the Game 1 outcome. The 2006 and 2007 eliminations by the Sharks, for example, were pretty similar matchups, but in 2006 the Preds won the first game and in 2007 the Preds won the second. They lost both in five, with similar rosters for both teams. The 2007 Preds, who lost the first game (in 2OT) came closer to making it a series, with no blowout losses and a Game 1 that really could have gone either way, than the 2006 Preds, who did get that Game 1 win.
The Lessons from 2015-2018
Some of the Preds’ most memorable series losses came during the era when Laviolette first got them back to the postseason. They were a dynamic, exciting team who finally had a young star forward; they were making progress; they made the Stanley Cup Final; they won the President’s Trophy.
They were eliminated four seasons in a row, in series where they dropped the first game.
Let’s rewind the clock.
2018: Winnipeg
The Jets and the Predators had a lot in common going into this series: they’d put up the two best regular-season records in the league, they played similar styles, and both had a lot to prove. I thought Nashville had looked shaky in its first-round series against a rebuilding Colorado that year, but their second-round series against Winnipeg was fun to watch even though they often looked a little outmatched.
As it happened, they got absolutely thrashed in Game 7. The game itself wasn’t even close. The series as a whole, though, maybe could have gone either way, and a Game 1 win and 2-0 series lead would have put Nashville in a position to win in six instead of seven.
2017: Pittsburgh
This is probably the best example to give if you want to make an argument about a Game 1 doom. Horrible refereeing–including an offside call so bad they changed the rules about offside that summer–arguably stole Game 1 from the Preds, and the series went downhill from there. And Rinne was really struggling against the Penguins, not a team he’d had success against in the past.
The Preds were, however, also struggling severely with attrition. Colton Sissons was their first-line center. They’d lost Ryan Johansen and Kevin Fiala, two of their best playmakers, in the previous two rounds. The fact that they still accomplished as much as they did in 2017 is incredibly impressive.
2016: San Jose
Their 2016 matchup against the Sharks was an incredibly winnable one for the Preds. They were in a solid position going into Game 7, despite a grueling playoff schedule to that point. They then proceeded to melt down on the ice, in a game that was an embarrassment to watch.
This is because all of their core players were absolutely exhausted–Laviolette had barely used his third pairing or fourth line, even in a series that included a 3OT game. Roman Josi, who reported multiple broken bones at locker cleanout, played over 200 minutes that series, and was being given top-pairing matchups. Shea Weber, five years older, played just six minutes left and declined an invitation to Worlds due entirely to fatigue. Multiple other players were playing injured while being leaned on more heavily than Paul Maurice was using his own core.
They just ran out of anything to give. If they’d won Game 1, it would have been over in six and they could have rested, sure, but losing Game 1 wasn’t the problem itself.
It’s worth noting that the Sharks cut their way through the West that year like a buzzsaw, with the Preds actually giving them the most trouble of the opponents they faced. They then–in a preview of 2017–got shredded, themselves, by the Penguins in the Stanley Cup Final.
2015: Chicago
This one stung a lot, until 2017 arrived to dethrone it. This was supposed to be Nashville’s revenge, and a chance to tear down a dynasty. They had not one but two multi-OT losses.
From one angle, the Preds could have won this series.
From another angle, Weber’s injury early in Game 2 was a series-ender. Josi and Seth Jones had no experience working together and were repeatedly responsible for some nightmarish defensive breakdowns that Rinne should never have had to deal with, a lot of which ended up in the back of the net. Weber was also a key part of the team’s offense and a critical part of morale.
Thatcher Demko’s injury this week had a lot of people predicting a repeat of Scott Darling’s fantastic performance in 2015, but Darling was far from the biggest problem Nashville faced that series. This one wasn’t about Game 1 at all. Sometimes a series is won or lost on the roster available.
What Does It Mean Now?
The Preds could still lose this series, and I certainly don’t promise otherwise. But having lost the first game doesn’t mean they will. At some point, they’re due for a series win when they’ve lost the first game. On average, NHL teams who’ve won the first game win the series just under 70% of the time–that means the team that loses the first game still wins the series more than three times out of every ten.
The Preds are 0-12 when losing the first game. Wouldn’t it be great if this were the year that ratio changed?