NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As omens go, Brandon Tanev scoring the opening goal of the series Friday night could be quite a good one for the Winnipeg Jets.



With Nashville’s elite top four deployed as expected against Winnipeg’s top two lines, an area for the Jets to exploit in this delicious second-round series is whether their bottom two forward lines can produce some offence when the Predators’ third-pairing of Alexei Emelin and Matt Irwin are the ice.



In fact, I had tweeted just that mere minutes before Tanev opened the scoring 14:51 into the first period, and indeed it came with the Emelin-Irwin duo on the ice for Nashville.



Now, let me be clear, I’m not suggesting this is a bad defensive pairing. Not at all. But it’s just in comparison to the star-studded top four of Mattias Ekholm, P.K. Subban, Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis, the drop-off is noticeable.



If the Jets do end up winning this series, I really do think...