Are the Devils and Predators Stuck in the Middle?

The NHL’s salary cap era has made the line between Stanley Cup front-runner and non-playoff team extremely thin. An extended win or loss streak can wind up being the difference between making the post-season and being on the outside of it looking in. And there are two teams in particular flirting with danger: the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference, and the Nashville Predators in the West.

Both the Preds and Devils are mired in mediocrity at the moment – Nashville currently has a 4-5-1 record in its past 10 games, while New Jersey has a 5-4-1 mark in their past 10 tilts – and though each of the two teams currently sit near or in a wild card spot, the Preds and Devils also have a slew of teams nipping at their heels in the standings. But there are different reasons for the malaise each of the two teams are experiencing right now.

To wit: in the Predators’ six most recent losses, defense is the underlying reason for their woes; in five of the six games, Nashville has surrendered at least five goals, losing games to good teams (including Vancouver, Dallas and Carolina) and bad teams (including Calgary, Detroit and Anaheim). And when Nashville does limit their goals against, they win more often than not. In six of their most recent eight wins, the Preds have limited their opponent’s scoring to two goals or fewer. Nashville’s offense simply isn’t dangerous enough to push them to more wins than they lose.

Meanwhile, the Devils are a stellar team with the puck, averaging 3.55 goals-for-per game – tying them with Detroit as the NHL’s fifth-best team on offense – and it’s New Jersey’s defense that lets them down too often, as evidenced by their goals-against average of 3.55 is the league’s fifth-worst number. Goaltending has been a clear issue for the Devils, and that likely won’t change until New Jersey GM Tom Fitzgerald pulls off a trade for a veteran netminder.

Regardless, both the Devils and Predators are not going to back into a playoff berth. In the East, New Jersey is one standing point behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for the second and final wild-card spot, but three teams – Washington, Pittsburgh and Detroit – have the same number of points as the Devils do. And in the West, the Preds occupy the first wild card spot, but they also have played the most games (41 in total) of any of the four teams behind them in the standings. Edmonton, Seattle, Arizona, St. Louis and Calgary all are within four points of Nashville, and at least three of those teams are likely to make a second-half-of-the-season surge in the standings.

All in all, the Predators and Devils have to be notably better if they’re to avert disaster and avoid winding up in the mushy middle. Some of that may be decided by trades the two teams make, but for the most part, the improvement must be internal. Otherwise, they’re asking for better results than their current rosters are capable of delivering. 

You can call it underachieving if you want, but the reality is that they are who their record says they are, and right now, they’re just bad enough to be far away from the top of their respective divisions and just good enough to avoid the bottom. And that is a recipe for misery, but one that their fans can’t say they didn’t see coming. It’s been clear for some time now that both teams are flawed, and it’s on both of them to prove otherwise.