The Dallas Stars won’t care about any of this and will be in town Wednesday night to put a muzzle on it, during Game 1 of a Stanley Cup Playoffs first-round series against the Predators.

But this is something. Maybe just a timely uptick in a roller-coaster season, with the next big hill coming right up. Maybe the start of another run. Definitely a Central Division banner to be hung – the Predators’ second ever, earned with Saturday’s 5-2 comeback win against the reviled Chicago Blackhawks at Bridgestone Arena.

Definitely, a different feeling. A team that has been awful this season when giving up the first goal and worse on the power play came back from a 2-0 deficit to win for the second straight game, getting the Viktor Arvidsson game winner with a man advantage. A veteran goaltender who had been struggling is red-hot Pekka Rinne again. A young prospect whose future with the franchise was unclear a few weeks ago is surging rookie defenseman Dante Fabbro.

And the fans, well, how can we describe the average Predators fan this season? I’d go with a flannel-wearing, cigarette-smoking teenager listening to Nirvana in 1992. In other words, full of angst. And with good reason. As Predators general manager David Poile joked before taking questions from reporters Sunday: “Well, that was an easy season.”

It was anything but, obviously. So there was pleasure in the two comeback victories to end the season and win the division – an achievement made possible by Winnipeg’s late-season slide. The Predators (47-29-6) gave those fans reason to get excited again.

Of course, they weren’t chanting about the Central Division late Saturday night in Bridgestone. They were chanting, “We want the Cup!”

That’s always been the goal, the only real goal, and this franchise has demonstrated clearly in the past two springs that the regular season and the postseason are independent of each other. So it’s on to Nashville’s first playoff series with Dallas, a series the Predators should win but will have to earn against one of the stingiest teams in the league.

“There’s nothing that says to me this won’t be a great series, very competitive and very close,” Poile said of two teams that scored 14 goals apiece against each other in five regular-season games, the Predators winning three of the five, two of them in overtime.

If the Predators avoid colossal disappointment and get to the second round, it will be the Winnipeg Jets or St. Louis Blues after that, and another series with home-ice advantage for the Predators.

Home ice against Winnipeg didn’t matter a year ago in the second round. But one of the prime benefits of this late steal of the Central Division and No. 2 overall seed in the Western Conference (after Pacific Division winner Calgary) is the opportunity to avoid a burly division rival in the first round. The winner of that Winnipeg-St. Louis series will bring fresh bruises into the second round.

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Poile said of those two blasting on each other for several games.

But again, that only matters if Nashville advances.

And it’s hard to say the 8-2-1 finish to the regular season matters much, similar to the fact that the Predators had won just 10 of 40 games when allowing the first goal this season but finished at 12-of-42, and the fact that they were 1-19-2 when trailing by a score of 2-0 but finished 3-19-2.

It’s easier to say Rinne’s strong finish to the regular season bodes well. And that the reunion of the Nick Bonino-Austin Watson-Colton Sissons line, Nashville’s best line in last season’s playoffs, has come at a perfect time.

And maybe, that the mental state of this team is more favorable than it was a year ago, when everyone but angst-ridden teenagers who don’t watch hockey was picking the Predators to win the whole thing.

“I think last year – this is my opinion – we might have underestimated the opposition a little bit coming off of that Presidents’ Trophy,” Poile said Sunday of 2018 first-round foe Colorado. “That Colorado series was probably a little bit harder than necessary.”

And then the Winnipeg series was a seven-game heartbreaker, and this regular season was an injury-riddled riddle, and Predators coach Peter Laviolette made it all very simple Sunday outside his team’s locker room.

“I’m a believer that you’ve got to wake up and make your day happen every day,” he said. “And so when Game 1 comes around, I don’t think last year has anything to do with it.”

Reach Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.

Predators playoffs schedule

Game 1 at Nashville: 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Fox Sports Tennessee, USA Network

Game 2 at Nashville: 5 p.m. Saturday, Fox Sports Tennessee, CNBC

Game 3 at Dallas: 8:30 p.m. Monday, April 15, Fox Sports Tennessee, NBC Sports Network

Game 4 at Dallas: 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, Fox Sports Tennessee, USA

Game 5 at Nashville (if necessary): TBA, Saturday, April 20

Game 6 at Dallas (if necessary): TBA, Monday, April 22

Game 7 at Nashville (if necessary): TBA, Wednesday, April 24

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