Coming off of four straight wins over Metropolitan Division opponents, the Carolina Hurricanes kick off a three-game road trip on Wednesday night against the Nashville Predators, seeking to notch their fifth win in a row.
It’s a rematch of a December 6 showdown in Raleigh that saw the Hurricanes rout the Predators by a 6-3 margin, but Nashville has won three of its past four games since that night, including a win over the league-best Colorado Avalanche and two blowout victories over the St. Louis Blues.
By doing so, the Predators have jumped the Blues by points percentage to essentially emerge from last place in the Central Division after a second consecutive dreadful start to their season.
Ryan O’Reilly leads Nashville with 26 points on the season, while Luke Evangelista paces the group with 19 assists and Filip Forsberg has the most goals with 14. The Predators are well below league average in every aspect of the game except the penalty kill, where they rank 13th at 81.7 percent.
For the Hurricanes, the big question heading in is once again which of the team’s three netminders will man the crease. Pyotr Kochetkov and Brandon Bussi split the team’s wins over Philadelphia on Saturday and Sunday, and at practice in Raleigh on Tuesday, it was Kochetkov in the starter’s crease with Frederik Andersen working on the other end.
In the last meeting between the two squads, the Canes were able to break through on the power play with goals on the man advantage from Taylor Hall and Nikolaj Ehlers to serve as a confidence boost for the struggling special teams unit.
Carolina leads the Eastern Conference in both points and points percentage, so tonight’s game will mark an opportunity against one of the more vulnerable teams the league has to offer to continue to build up that cushion over the rest of the conference. As of Tuesday night, there’s just a nine-point gap between the Islanders in second in the conference and the Blue Jackets down in 16th.
Here’s how to check out the action:
Time: 8:00 PM
Location: Bridgestone Arena – Nashville, TN
TV: FanDuel Sports Network with Mike Maniscalco, play-by-play; Tripp Tracy, color analyst; Shane Willis, analyst; Hannah Yates, rinkside.
Radio: 99.9 The Fan FM
Line: ML: CAR -184; PL: CAR -1.5 +132
