The Nashville Predators are well aware they must change their fortunes in a hurry to avoid a repeat of last season’s disappointing campaign.
Thus the importance of snapping their current three-game losing skid when the Predators host the last-place Calgary Flames on Saturday afternoon.
Including a 4-1 road loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday, Nashville has dropped seven of nine games (2-6-1), and the discouragement is starting to show.
“It was a great effort. We played really well but didn’t get the result,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. “I think we’re all a little bit frustrated over it, but we’ve got to go through this. Every team does, and it’s how we handle ourselves fighting through this.”
The Predators outshot the Flyers 33-18, including a 24-11 margin through two periods, but never took a lead. Then again, that lack of production is nothing new for a club that has scored more than two goals only once in its last eight outings.
Of utmost importance is to avoid the same death spiral that saw the Predators start last season with high hopes but never realize them en route to their worst finish in more than a decade.
Finding even a single victory would be a huge start to prevent the negative thoughts from growing.
“We had the momentum there for a while and couldn’t get that break to give us that confidence,” forward Ryan O’Reilly said. “And that’s been kind of all year for us. We’re hanging on and a bad thing happens, and we kind of … you can feel us all tighten.”
Not that the visitors have any sympathy. The Flames arrive in Music City, U.S.A., singing the blues, coming off a 4-3 shootout loss to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday in which they held a lead on three occasions.
Calgary has mustered only two wins in 12 games (2-8-2), and only one since opening the season with a victory.
The start to the season is among the worst in franchise history.
“Most importantly now, it’s a new month here,” defenseman MacKenzie Weegar said. “We can get rid of October. I don’t need to see that month for a long time here. Get into November, make it a positive month and a successful one.”
The Flames are actually the only team to have an even worse offensive attack than the Predators on a per-game basis, but that has not been the biggest issue lately.
Penalties and miscues have been recurring themes for the floundering team that has actually opened the scoring in eight of its dozen games but lost all but one of those affairs.
Like the Predators, the Flames know all they can do is keep plugging away and not let the disappointment take over.
“It’s an exciting time for us to turn the page from October,” forward Justin Kirkland told the team’s website. “Obviously it’s not the position that any of us wanted to be in, so if you look at the good things we are doing in our game and continue to play a hard-nosed, team-style game, the results are going to come.”
