It's gut check time in Nashville for the Predators. Granted, they have been decimated by injuries, but the effort by those who were healthy was not what it needed to be in last night's 4-0, no-show loss to Columbus.
While some may want to blame the coaches for the lack of effort, they are not the ones on the ice. In the last couple of weeks we have seen outstanding efforts as well as ones like last night in the third period. A few individual players have been virtually invisible on the ice.
Due to the graciousness of those around them, the Predators managed to hang on to sixth place in the Western Conference at 70 points in spite of the loss. With 22 games remaining, it looks like they will need 13 to 15 wins to be in the hunt for at least the final playoff position.
The Predators need to rebound tomorrow night against Chicago and play with confidence and play a full sixty minutes. When they travel to Dallas on Saturday, they need to kick the Stars while they are down in the midst of a current five game losing streak and then come home and play with intensity against the Jackets on Sunday afternoon.
Preds-Jackets Round-Up...
Here is our game story from last night.
Josh Cooper had his game story, notes column, and postgame ponderings.
From the blog world reports come from Amanda DiPaolo, Mark Willoughby, Dirk Hoag (with his advances stats), Jeremy Gover, Predatorial, What the Puck, and Hockey Night in Nashville.
Happier stories from last night's game come from the Columbus Dispatch, The Dark Blue Jacket, and The Cannon.
Hockey Fights has the Jordin Totoo-Jared Boll tussle.
Programming Note...
Ryan Porth at RLD Radio has scored a major coup rounding up TSN's Darren Dreger during trade deadline week for his show at noon Central today. John Forslund will also be featured in what should be an outstanding show in spite of my efforts as co-host once again. Be sure and join us live or on podcast after the fact.
In Preds Nation...
The Edmonton Journal speculates that last night's game was an audition of Jon Blum's talent for the Oilers' scouts.
The Fourth Period finally got around to running Ryan Porth's conversation with Mike Fisher.
It was shaky, but Anders Lindback won his AHL debut in a 5-4 Ads victory.
Predators.com has their weekly Admirals update.
Around the NHL...
Ryan Porth had a conversation with Shane Doan before the Preds-Yotes game on Saturday. Regardless of the hit on Ryan Suter, Doan is a good guy.
RLD Hockey also had a good synopsis of what's left on the schedule for all thirty teams.
Steve Lapore has suggestions to improve Hockey Day in America.
I love this stuff. Erik Johnson wants payback against the Blues. That is old school hockey. He did score a goal against the Blues in last nights 4-3 Avs win which broke their ten game losing streak.
In spite of the Avs breaking the streak, Peter Stastny ripped the Avalanche for making the big trade over the weekend.
Predator fans can cheer on ex-Pred Nolan Yonkman who caused Jody Shelly to have 60 stitches during the Coyotes 3-2 win over the Flyers last night.
The sale of the Buffalo Sabres to Terry Pegula was finally completed yesterday and he promised to revive the Buffalo scouting department to everyone's delight.
Odds and Ends...
How about non-alcoholic beer as a new sports drink. I don't see that this will catch on.
If these figures about the value of Facebook posts and Likes and Tweets are correct, I should be rich.
Here are a list and discussion of social media measuring tools so you can count your millions from your tweets.
Amazon is upping the bar in the online streaming fight with Netflix by offering free streaming of 5000 movies to its Amazon Prime package.
More Later...
Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass
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