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Posted at 1:10 PM EST.

10:05 PM EST. OT included. The Preds are 19-7-4. They are also 7-1-2 over their past 10 games and they have also picked up seven out of a possible eight points over their last four games. Everything is coming up aces for this team right now but we’ll once again take the position that they are the luckiest team in the NHL that is not close to playing as good as their record suggests. The Predators are dominating nobody. Over their past 15 games, their score and venue adjusted Corsi For percentages read like this:

50.66%

46.32

46.91

50.81

45.90

45.92

55.78

51.34

52.54

47.58

51.88

50.62               

46.05   

38.11

50.42

When the Preds have won the Corsi For battle, which is half the time, it has been by the slimmest of margins or barely above 50% in most games. They are not getting outplayed but most of their games have been damn close, which brings the next number into perspective. That would be the luck-driven PDO (shooting percentage + save percentage) ranking, where the Preds rank fifth over that span. The Preds rank second in the league in PP % and seventh in the league in penalty killing. PDO + penalty killing + power-play are all working in Nashville’s favor to create the illusion that this is one of the best teams in the NHL. They’re not. Nashville should be a fringe playoff team at best. Now take away its best center in Ryan Johansen and it leaves a bigger hole in that average lineup but all anyone wants to talk about is the Canucks injury to Bo Horvat.

Yeah, that injury hurts. So, too, does the injury to Sven Baertschi but Vancouver has proven to be resilient and feisty as hell all season long and this changes nothing. It changes their lineup but we can live with the Sedin’s getting more ice time. Besides, the analytics suggest that they have not suffered much at all in a small sample size without Horvat. Don’t get us wrong, as the Canucks are absolutely better with Horvat in the lineup and to think or suggest otherwise would be foolish. However, they are still playing well, despite what the results say. Vancouver has dropped three straight to Philadelphia, Calgary and Winnipeg respectively but they were the better team in two of those games but goaltending that was the difference. The Preds opened as a -115 to a -120 choice but the market has hammered the favorite since to bring it up to its current price. This wager is more about fading the Preds than it is backing the Canucks although we have no problem backing Vancouver whatsoever, as it is a rare day when the Canucks do not give us our money’s worth in effort alone.     

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