Neutral-Zone Crap: How the Predators reversed their fortunes
Nashville coach John Hynes has his stars aligned properly...plus Connor Bedard for the Canadian Olympic team, U.S. college free agents and equipment problems for NHLers
Two years ago today, Nashville Predators GM David Poile stepped out of his lane in a big way when he hired John Hynes, who had just been let go by the New Jersey Devils five weeks prior, to replace Peter Laviolette, whom he had fired the day before. Six years ago yesterday, Poile did what he often does. The cowboy GM swung for the fences on a trade, dealing stud defenseman Seth Jones to the Columbus Blue Jackets in return for disgruntled center Ryan Johansen.
We mention this only because the two moves are inextricably linked, given how the Predators have shocked everyone in the hockey world with their play this season. On points, they’re the first-place team in the Central Division and second in the Western Conference. On points percentage – a far more accurate way to gauge a team in a season where there is such a disparity in games played – they’re second in both the division and the conference to the Colorado Avalanche. Regardless of the metric, the Predators are overperforming in an enormous way.
There are a number of reasons for the Predators’ surge this season. One of them, Juuse Saros, stopped 46 shots in a 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings Thursday night to run their record to 10-1-1 in their past dozen games. Another is that defenseman Roman Josi is doing Roman Josi things. But the third, and the most important, is that Hynes has managed to get Johansen and two other key offensive players, Matt Duchene and Filip Forsberg, on board. It took almost two years of coaching through a pandemic to do it, but Hynes has reached an agreement with his star players that has allowed them to shine.
“They’re humans and they want to be better,” Hynes told Hockey Unfiltered. “They don’t feel good about the criticism and they want to live up to what the organization has given them.”
After looking lost the past couple of years as the No. 1 center, Johansen is no longer that. He’s the No. 2 center behind Mikael Granlund. Duchene struggled just as mightily trying to fill that role, so now he essentially plays right wing on the top line with Granlund and Forsberg, although he still takes his fair share of draws. And it was very much a case of breaking them down to build them back up. At different times, Hynes took away ice time and responsibility for all three players, then had some frank conversations with each. In training camp, each of them outlined what they wanted and Hynes told them what he needed to see from them to give it to them.
As a result, Forsberg is driving the net as hard as he ever has, getting to scoring areas and letting his skill take over. Duchene and Johansen are producing at nearly a point-per-game pace and the Predators are far more offensively balanced.
“It has been a work in progress,” Hynes said. “It was a situation where the performance by them wasn’t at their standards, it wasn’t what we felt we needed as an organization and we really had some discussions and some pushing and prodding on both sides. Really how we went about it is, ‘We all want the same thing. But how do we connect the dots with their competitiveness, their work ethic, the reliability and consistency that they play with?’ They felt they should be in those situations and I didn’t disagree with them from a talent standpoint, but the performance level wasn’t where it needed to be.”
The pushing and prodding is pretty common between coaches and players. It is very much a chicken and egg dilemma. The player wants more ice time and responsibility so that he can perform to the best of his abilities. The coach needs to see the player do more to earn that ice time and responsibility. “The players who are going to play the most minutes, they have to drive the team,” Hynes said. “How are you going to win if the players who are playing the most minutes aren’t at a high enough competitive level? It was a little bit of, ‘If you need me to do that, then I need the minutes.’ And it was like, ‘Well, I gave you the minutes, but there’s nothing going on here.’ So you take it away and give it back and then, this summer, it was more like, ‘How do we work together. Show me in training camp. I believe you guys should be playing these minutes and in these situations. I’m going to give it to you, but the performance has to be there.’ ”
And it has been. Which is fortuitous for Forsberg, who is an unrestricted free agent after this season. But the Predators will have almost $26 million in cap space, so that should not pose a huge problem if he wants to stay. Given that they play in the most competitive division in hockey, the Predators are going to have to continue to play like a house on fire, but suddenly things don’t look quite so bleak in Nashville.
CONNOR BEDARD, OLYMPIAN? (SHOULD BE)
By all accounts it’s not going to happen, but it should. Hear me out. Connor Bedard should be part of the 2022 Canadian Olympic hockey team. Both from a competitive and development standpoint, it would be a bold move that could end up paying off for Hockey Canada down the line.
Yes, he’s 16. And yes, the Olympics are a whole different animal than the World Under-18 Championship and the World Juniors. But if Hockey Canada were to take Bedard as an extra forward, there’s nothing this young man has done to this point in his career to suggest that he wouldn’t be able to raise his game to meet the level of competition. At every step of the way since Bedard has been 12 years old, enormous things have been expected of him. And he has overdelivered every single time.
But taking Bedard would also be an opportunity to expose him to all of what the Olympics are so that when he’s in the NHL in 2026, he’ll be prepared to compete on the world stage in a best-on-best tournament. By the time the 2026 Games roll around, Bedard will be 20 years old and in the midst of his third season in the NHL. Again, there’s nothing in his history to suggest that Bedard will not be an elite NHL player by that time in his career. In 2009-10, Steven Stamkos was in the midst of a 51-goal season as a 20-year-old, but was deemed too green to take to Vancouver. In his rookie season, Sidney Crosby was in the midst of a 102-point campaign, which would have put him third in NHL scoring among Canadian Olympians behind Joe Thornton and Dany Heatley, but was not selected to go to Turin. Taking Bedard this time around would keep Hockey Canada from making mistakes like those ones again.
COLLEGE FREE-AGENT FRENZY
Every year, there are late-blooming college players who have fallen through the cracks of the draft system and end up signing contracts with NHL teams. Some of them work out, a good number don’t. But the days of teams going into bidding wars ended with the salary cap. Now all teams can offer a player is the maximum rookie salary and signing bonus, a year off the contract by appearing in a game immediately and a path to the NHL, one that they could easily block once the contract is signed.
So the risk is certainly minimized, which is why teams are willing to take a chance on some of these players. This season is no exception. Here are some unrefined gems that teams will spend much of the next two months scouting:
Owen Sillinger is a 24-year-old left winger who is in the top five in scoring in the nation with Bemidji State University. The son of former NHLer, Mike, and older brother of Columbus Blue Jackets rookie, Cole, Sillinger is scoring at better than a point-per-game pace, with 10-16-26 totals in 20 games. At 5-foot-10 and 183 pounds, he’s slightly undersized by NHL standards, but so was his father.
It is shaping up to be a huge year for Ben Meyers, a junior left winger at the University of Minnesota. According to my Substack colleague Chris Peters (hockeysense.substack.com), Meyers has been named to the U.S. Olympic team. Meyers will finish the season at Minnesota when he returns from Beijing, then sign a deal with an NHL team.
At 6-foot-3 and 202 pounds, Jacob Bengtsson of Lake Superior State University is getting a lot of looks from NHL teams. The 22-year-old, who left Sweden to play in the USHL with Waterloo before university, is a very good puck mover and offensive defenseman. There is no rush from Bengtsson’s point of view since he’s a sophomore, but if the right offer is there, he’ll take it. Teammate Louis Boudon, a junior from France, will also get some interest.
Senior winger Drew Worrad of Western Michigan is one of college hockey’s prime set-up men, with 22 assists and 27 points in 19 games. He’s currently tied for second in the nation in scoring and tied for fifth in points per game. His 22 assists are tied for first in the country.
Another premier set-up man, Brendan Furry is one of the offensive drivers of the top-ranked team in the country in Minnesota State. Considering he was prepared to play club hockey at Bowling Green a couple of years ago, Furry has indeed come a long way.
Senior Jakub Sirota of the University of Maine is another puck-moving defenseman who has been picking up a lot of interest. The 23-year-old native of the Czech Republic came to North America when he was 17 to play in the USHL.
DUDE, WHERE’S MY GEAR?
Agent provocateur Allan Walsh tweeted out the following the other day concerning the havoc the pandemic has been playing with the supply chain, which has left a lot of NHL players and teams scrambling to get equipment:
That has indeed been the case. The problem, according to those in the know, is both a domestic and international one. Most of the equipment companies – Bauer, CCM, True and Warrior – assemble their products in Canada, but receive the components for them from overseas. That’s especially the case for gloves and sticks. Warrior has gotten a little lucky with sticks because they have a plant in Mexico and its supply has not been affected. CCM, on the other hand, has a stick plant in Vietnam, which was shut down for a month. True does all of its skates and goalie equipment in Winnipeg. Bauer assembles its skates in Blainville, Que., but gets the components from China. Both have been problem spots in terms of shutdowns.
“The company has experienced some supply-chain challenges combined with workforce challenges,” said a Bauer spokesperson. “But we’ve seen this across a range of industries, not just hockey. And we’re working as quickly and effectively as we can to try to deliver.”
It’s true that those challenges have left equipment managers scrambling to find gear for players, who are notoriously finicky about what they wear and use. Some players go a full season with the same skates, some players have three pairs on the go at the same time and change them every 10 games or so. Don’t expect to see Auston Matthews or Connor McDavid at the local hockey shop anytime soon, but you can be sure their equipment managers will be calling there looking for gear.
DRIBS AND DRABS
Watching the Colorado Avalanche dismantle the Winnipeg Jets Thursday night did nothing to quell the thought in this corner that the Avs are the best team in the NHL…The defending champs are getting healthy again and they are looking deadly as well…Funny thing about Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas, his under-the-radar moves have been amazing, but his big-ticket signings have left a lot to be desired. To wit: Nick Ritchie has been a bust since Day 1. There are a lot of reasons he was put on waivers, but you’d have to think that this play on Edmonton’s first goal Wednesday night put the Leafs over the edge.
Name three better non-entry-level value players in the NHL right now than Evan Rodrigues, Ryan Hartman and Chandler Stephenson…Happy Birthday to Hooley Smith (118 years old) and Babe Pratt (106). Pratt is one of only two players (two players!) in the history of the Maple Leafs to win the Hart Trophy as MVP (Ted Kennedy is the other), but Auston Matthews is coming hard…It feels like the playoffs, and not in a good way. You never know who’s playing when anymore and which games have been postponed…Wonder if Ilya Kovalchuk, who was named GM of the Russian Olympic Committee team, would reconsider now that NHLers aren’t playing and play in the tournament himself. He was a still a point-a-game player in the KHL last season…Crosschecking crackdown. Pfft. Good one, NHL.