Welcome to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Predators fans…adjust your caffeine intake appropriately.
Since the Predators finished in the Western Conference’s top wild card spot with their 99-point regular season performance, they are facing the Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the playoffs.
Vancouver won the Pacific Division this season with 109 points. The Dallas Stars, Nashville’s fellow Central Division team, won the West with 113 points. By winning the West, the Stars get to play the team that finished in the second wild card position, the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights.
One quirk with the format is that the NHL doesn’t reseed the teams and play in a bracket-style format. What that means for the Predators is that they are functionally members of the Pacific Division temporarily, for what they hope is two playoff rounds. By the same math, the Golden Knights are now in the Central for the first two rounds of the playoffs, should they advance that far.
What all this means for the Predators is travel, lots of travel if they hope to make their way through the Western Conference gauntlet and attempt to make it to the Stanley Cup Final for the second time in team history. It also means that the Predators’ opponents will have home ice advantage in the 2-2-1-1-1 format for home games in each series.
With their seeding, the Predators wouldn’t have a chance at home ice advantage until the Western Conference Final, and that would only happen if both the Predators and Golden Knights win two series apiece.
What it all means for Predators fans is likely a lot of late nights. In the early rounds of the playoffs, the NHL tries to spread out games as best as possible for television purposes.
Even when the games are played in Nashville, the NHL will often push start times as late as 8:45 or 9 p.m. CDT with the games being Western Conference matchups. Those late start games always seem to be the ones to go multiple overtimes as well.
Even with the cushy travel arrangements that NHL teams enjoy, all the miles, and in this case kilometers, as well, that Western Conference teams must endure take their toll. In addition to the long charter flights, the time zone changes crisscrossing the continent add to the exhaustion.
In the Predators only trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2017, their path travel-wise was much easier than what they are facing this year. That season, they finished in the second wild card spot, but swept the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round. They then took out the St. Louis Blues in six games. Advancing to the Western Conference Final with just one trip to Chicago and two to St. Louis, all while staying in the Central time zone was a great benefit for the team.
The Predators did log some miles in the Western Conference Finals that year, in which they dispatched the Anaheim Ducks in six games. But winning in six games required just two round trips to Southern California.
All of the NHL’s Eastern Conference teams reside in the Eastern time zone, so the travel burden is much easier on those teams. But since 2010, a Western Conference team has won the Cup eight times compared to the Eastern Conference’s six.