Signing three of the top players available in Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei made NHL free agency look like a big win for the Nashville Predators.
They haven’t had many since.
After committing more than $108 million within a few hours on July 1 and sparking Stanley Cup-contending expectations, the Predators are dead last in the league and off to their worst start in franchise history. They’ve lost 10 of their first 14 games and in their most recent defeat had more penalty minutes than shots.
“There’s no going back and changing anything that’s happened, so you can’t feel sorry for yourself,” Stamkos said after a 3-2 loss at Washington. “We’re in the position we’re in, and we have to find our way back. The guys in this locker room last year had a similar start to the season and found a way, and for us new guys, adjusting to the system is coming. I think as much as we wanted it to happen overnight, sometimes it doesn’t necessarily happen that way.”
That Capitals game featured a handful of shots ringing off one of the posts or the crossbar: almost-goals, and those don’t count. And they didn’t create a whole lot of confidence.
“There’s still obviously frustration,” said veteran center Ryan O’Reilly, who unprompted pointed out he has yet to score a goal at 5 on 5 this season. “But at least we’re getting those opportunities. If you look at the game before, we weren’t getting opportunities.”
The game before was a 3-0 shutout loss at home to Los Angeles. The game after a 6-2 drubbing at the hands of the defending champion Florida Panthers.
Consistency is lacking in Nashville’s game, and it’s being replaced by frustration.
“Frustration’s been leaking in a little bit,” said second-year coach Andrew Brunette, whose job status will almost certainly be debated if the losing continues. “I think frustration, at times in our mind, it gets confused a little bit with work and effort.”
Brunette, who played 1,159 games in the league and took over as interim coach of the Panthers when they had the NHL’s best regular season in 2021-22, isn’t worried about the first burst of effort. He said winning at this level is about the second, third and fourth effort.
Stamkos, who played 16 seasons for Tampa Bay and was captain when the Lightning hoisted the Cup back to back in 2020 and ‘21, is not questioning how hard he and his teammates are working. He wondered if sometimes they’re working hard but “not necessarily working smart.”
Nashville is outshooting opponents 445-411 but being outscored 50-33. Some of that comes from cheating away from responsibilities defensively to push for those goals that haven’t been coming.
“A lot of times when you don’t score, you go back to some habits that allowed you to score in the past,” Brunette said. “It’s gotten us a little bit to the perimeter and it’s gotten us further and further from the net, and when you’re further and further from the net you’re probably further and further from scoring goals.”
Stamkos is finally scoring. He has three goals in four games after just one in the first 10. The team success has not followed.
One constant has been the play in net of Juuse Saros, who signed an eight-year extension in the offseason that’s worth just under $62 million and keeps the franchise goaltender under contract through 2033. He has allowed 2.85 goals a game with a save percentage of .904 that is damaged by some of the stuff happening in front of him, as evidenced by Saros saving 95 goals above the league average.
“He’s a rock for us,” Stamkos said. “As poor as our record has been, it might have even been worse if it wasn’t for him. … We know how solid he is back there, and we’re lucky to have him.”
The Predators have, as a team, also been a little unlucky. They’ve scored on just 7.4% of their shots, second-worst in the league and ahead of only the Edmonton Oilers, who have also struggled early.
Edmonton’s bad start a year ago, which precipitated a coach firing and the hiring of Kris Knoblauch that started a run to Game 7 of the final, is reason for optimism for Nashville. But this is also the time of year the Oilers’ fortunes started to turn, and the Predators know there’s urgency to figure it out sooner than later.
“We need results, and we need them now,” said O’Reilly, who won the Cup with St. Louis in 2019. “We have to stay with it. I don’t know if patience is the word, but we need that desperation and we’ve got to keep working. It’s not everyone go on their own, trying to go rogue. It’s sticking together, relying on each other to get us out of this. We know we will.”
