The Golden Games: A Tournament of Nashville Predators Greatness

The 2015-16 Nashville Predators, the most successful team in franchise history by most measurements, featured some incredible performances from the team’s top stars.

Many players reached historical milestones over the course of the season, including Mike Fisher and Mike Ribeiro exceeding the 1,000 games played mark, Shea Weber reaching the No. 2 spot in franchise history in career goals scored, and Filip Forsberg tying the franchise record for goals in a season. Cap that off with the team reaching a point in the playoffs that had not previously been reached and the year was memorable to say the least.

There were also a number of individual game performances that stand out as being particularly memorable. Everyone remembers Forsberg’s back-to-back hat-tricks. Then there’s Mike Fisher’s play in Game 5 against the San Jose Sharks, which was other-worldly. Pekka Rinne played arguably the best game of his career in Game 7 against the Anaheim Ducks. And surely you’ve watched Roman Josi’s undressing of Erik Karlsson numerous times.

So, in review of a remarkable ’15-’16 season, we decided it would be fun to see which individual game performance stands out as the best.

Introducing, The Golden Games: A Tournament of Preds Greatness

Here’s how it works:

• The setup is a bracket-style, comparison tournament, much like “March Madness” or OTF’s very own Nashville Food Tournament.
• The top 16 game performances from this past season (including playoffs) have been seeded according to a specialized scientific algorithm (Alex wrote them down on paper and then put numbers next to them).
• Each day you will vote between two game performances, with some details on each performance in case you forgot how awesome they were. You will have 48 hours to vote.
• The performance with the most votes moves on the next round in the four-round tournament.
• Note: We’ll include only the basic stats for each performance, so feel free to do some digging around in the game/event summaries when making your decision. The NHL game recaps will be linked for your convenience.

Before we move on to the first contest of the tournament, here is a look at the overall bracket:

Laviolette Division

Poile Division

Let The Games Begin

#1 Filip Forsberg (2/27/16 vs STL)

On February 27th, 2016, Forsberg finished off the best week of his career with his second hat-trick in a row, this time against the division rival St. Louis Blues. He absolutely dominated the Blues in their defensive zone, wreaking havoc on goalie Jake Allen with wrist shots that simply could not be stopped.

It would end up being the only four point game by a Preds player in the ’15-’16 season.

vs.

#8 Shea Weber (12/21/15 vs. MON)

On December 21st, 2015, Weber powered the Preds to a dominating win over the hapless Canadiens. Following an absolute bomb from the blue-line in the first period, the Preds captain tacked on a couple of assists later in the game for his third three point night in the month of December. The Weber- Roman Josi pairing was particularly dominant on this night, holding the Canadiens to just one goal.

VOTE BELOW!

(Voting ends on Wednesday 7/20 @ 5PM)

Who had the better single game performance?