Nashville Predators @ New Jersey Devils Preview: East Coast Swing
The Predators look to get back in the win column as they make their first stop in the new Metropolitan division. The Devils team they are playing has not been good this season.
We aren't even going to mention last game. If you watched the entire thing, you must be some kind of sadist. Luckily, the New Jersey team they are playing is about as easy a next game as they could ask for, as the Devils have not performed up to their standards this year.
The Stats
| Nashville Predators | New Jersey Devils | |||
| Record | 8-6-2 | 17th | 4-7-5 | 27th |
| GF/Game | 2.31 | 24th | 1.88 | 27th |
| GA/Game | 2.94 | 24th | 2.50 | 12th |
| 5-on-5 Close SF/60 | 30.1 | 14th | 27.0 | 23rd |
| 5-on-5 Close SA/60 | 28.6 | 13th | 25.0 | 3rd |
| Fenwick Close | 51.10 | 11th | 52.60 | 9th |
| 5-on-5 Close Save % | .922 | 15th | .902 | 26th |
| 5-on-4 GF/60 | 7.0 | 13th | 5.4 | 20th |
| # of PP's/Gm | 3.06 | 27th | 3.50 | 17th |
| 4-on-5 GA/60 | 6.7 | 17th | 5.8 | 14th |
| # of PK's/Gm | 3.38 | 12th | 3.13 | 5th |
New Jersey Devils
With the departure of Ilya Kovalchuk over the summer, many knew the Devils were going to have an off-season. However, I don't know if anyone predicted them to be this bad. They are near the bottom of the NHL in terms of scoring goals, and they were one of the last teams to record a win at the beginning of this season.
Corey Schneider and Martin Brodeur have been splitting the goaltending duties, and they haven't been terrible. It's more or less been the team in front of them that has faltered. The only person on the team with double-digit points is the one and only Jaromir Jagr.
Nashville Predators
No one looked good in Friday night's dreadful outing in Winnipeg. The hope is that whatever it was that was ailing them north of the 49th will not continue to do so on the east coast. Seth Jones was dropped from the first forward pair to the third, in place of Mattias Ekholm. I would love to see Roman Josi and Shea Weber back together, as it looks like Josi has been skating well enough to handle it.
Game time at 6:00 p.m. CST on good ol' FS-TN.
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