Avalanche at Predators
The Nashville Predators have just completed the best season in franchise history, with a Presidents' Trophy guaranteeing coach Peter Laviolette's club home-ice advantage throughout playoffs. The Predators are bidding to make some noise in Music City as they vie for their 11th consecutive victory over the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday in Game 1 of the Western Conference first-round series.
The Predators know the value of home-ice advantage as the club won nine of 11 last spring at Bridgestone Arena to nearly unseat defending champion Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Final, but that doesn't mean it is looking past an Avalanche squad that punched its playoff berth in the last game of the regular season. "There's so many good teams, it doesn't matter if you're eighth or first," Nashville captain Roman Josi said. "You saw what happened last year. For us, it's not a different approach. We know the first round, it doesn't matter who we are going to play, it's going to be extremely hard." It hasn't been too difficult this season as the Predators outscored Colorado by a 17-8 margin in a four-game sweep, and the Avalanche enter the playoffs with five losses in their last seven games (2-4-1). "I thought we had some good games, lost in OT, some close ones. We just have to play our game and make them respond to us," potential Hart Trophy candidate Nathan MacKinnon said of facing the Predators.
TV: 9:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, Sportsnet, TVAS, FS Tennessee (Nashville)
ABOUT THE AVALANCHE (43-30-9, 4th in Central): MacKinnon (team-leading 39 goals) joins Mikko Rantanen (29 goals) and captain Gabriel Landeskog (25 goals) in accounting for 36 percent of the team's goal production this season. Alexander Kerfoot is next in line with 19 tallies, and linemate Tyson Jost knows that more secondary scoring is needed if Colorado is going to score the upset. "It's huge. Our line's talked about that a lot," the 20-year-old Jost said. "Ghetto (Sven Andrighetto) and Kerfoot and myself, we always talk about that after games, after practices, is trying to produce. ... We know what the stakes are, we know that we're going to have to step up too."
ABOUT THE PREDATORS (53-18-11, 1st in Central): Filip Forsberg has flustered Colorado both this season and throughout his career, scoring in overtime of a 4-3 win on March 4 before tallying twice nearly two weeks later to up his point total to 24 (13 goals, 11 assists) in 20 encounters. Forsberg joins Viktor Arvidsson (team-leading 29 goals), Craig Smith (25 goals) and Kevin Fiala (23 goals) to lead Nashville's seventh-ranked offense while P.K. Subban provides scoring punch among arguably best defensive grouping in the NHL. The 28-year-old Subban has recorded a team-leading 25 power-play points and Forsberg has chipped in with 21 for the Predators, who have scored four times with the man advantage against the Avalanche.
OVERTIME
1. Colorado's Jonathan Bernier, who sports a 9-4-0 career mark versus Nashville, has posted a 1-2-0 record since fellow G Semyon Varlamov was announced to be out for the season with a lower-body injury.
2. Predators G Pekka Rinne has inserted his name as the Vezina Trophy front-runner with 42 wins and eight shutouts to go along with a .927 save percentage this season.
3. The Avalanche are 2-for-21 on the power play versus Nashville this season.