Nashville Predators have had one of the franchise’s worst years on the power play. Here is what has gone wrong and how to fix it.

The Nashville Predators are one season removed from achieving their second-best Power Play% in franchise history. The expectations were to carry that into the current season with largely the same roster returning. However, things have not panned out that way.

In fact, they managed to finish just barely ahead of their worst power play in franchise history, second only to the first Predators team in existence. That team won 28 games in the 1998-99 season, so the talent level was far from the current iteration of the team. Predators fans and analysts alike have been baffled by the regression. No one seems to have an answer, though.

It was mentioned a lot over the summer and leading up to this season about how the players did not want David Poile making any major changes to the team. They believed they had the right fit to go all the way and hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup. Most fans agreed. After all, they did just win the President’s Trophy after all.

Poile obliged and simply made the necessary depth transactions one makes from year-to-year. Everyone believed they would run a similar power play with similar line combinations going into the new season, and they did that for the most part.

But, the results were not the same. The Nashville Predators plummeted to the bottom of the league and never came out. Even now in the playoffs, they cannot muster anything substantial with the extra man to the tune of 0 for 8 in three games played as of this writing. Let’s take a deeper look.