The Predators welcome the Lightning to town for the first of two preseason games.
Tonight fans in Nashville will get another look at this season's potential Predators as Tampa Bay comes to Bridgestone Arena. This evening's 7:00 PM game was originally scheduled to be played at Amalie Arena in Tampa Bay but was relocated to Nashville because of Hurricane Ian.
What should Predators fans be watching for once the puck drops tonight?
Switched Up Lines
John Hynes will be mixing up the line combinations for the game.
-"We'll try some different combinations for sure," Hynes said after practice yesterday. "Some of it is just trying to maybe even look at some lines like - what do we feel like some lines could look like that could be potential with a lot of guys competing for the same spots."
No need to panic if Johansen/Niederreiter/Tomasino or Duchene/Granlund/Forsberg aren't together. John Hynes has been up front about the fact that the players at this year's training camp have been making roster decisions challenging. These preseason games will be used to highlight individual players who may be vying for a similar roster spot as well as flesh out potential line combinations.
Special Teams
Special teams wasn't terribly special in the doubleheader against the Florida Panthers. While Cody Glass scored a power play goal in the evening game, there wasn't a lot of structure in place. The coaching staff hadn't worked much on special teams in the opening days of training camp.
The coaching staff has slowly begun implementing special teams systems in practice since then, so there may be more to like and more to take away from play when either team occupies the sin bin.
Individual performances on special teams will be under close scrutiny as well. John Hynes will be looking for any extra tools in a player's toolbox as he formulates a regular season roster. Who is effective on a penalty kill? Who can create scoring opportunities on the man advantage? These little pockets of potential can add up as preseason winds down.
Goaltending
There is no goalie controversy when it comes to Nashville's starting netminder. Juuse Saros will not only be the starter this season, but he will likely also have another year of high volume starts. But who will be his backup?
John Hynes and the coaching staff are spending a lot of time at training camp evaluating the potential goaltending candidates. Connor Ingram, Kevin Lankinen, and Yaroslav Askarov are the most likely possibilities. It would be a surprising move for the franchise to give Askarov NHL minutes before he gets his feet wet in Milwaukee, so it is looking like Ingram and Lankinen will be battling for the back up role.
How each of them play in preseason is going to carry a lot of weight when it comes to decision time, so watch the goings on in net closely tonight.
The Predators take on the Lightning at 7:00 pm CT at Bridgestone Arena. The game will be streamed on the Nashville Predators website.