The Predators miss Rinne, Ted Nolan sends a message, and hey, you should buy the midseason guide!

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My favorite type of full scheduled Saturday night of NHL hockey are the full scheduled Saturday night’s of NHL hockey that don’t include a major injury. Last night was one of those, thankfully.

Aside from Claude Giroux’s Curt Schilling moment, Logan Couture losing a tooth, and Martin Jones’ apaparently non-serious back spasms – mostly NHLers avoided serious injury on Saturday night. Oh also Carey Price is fighting through an apparently minor upper-body injury.

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In Eastern Conference action on Saturday night the Columbus Blue Jackets managed to edge out the Boston Bruins thanks to a pair of timely third-period goals from Matt Calvert – who was battling the flu, and was too sick to speak to the media post game.

Ryan Johansen added a pair of points, to go along with a four shot, two hit, 1 PPP, +1 performance. He’s now riding a 13-game point streak, which is the longest in the NHL this season.

What a monster.

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Though the Bruins lost, their overall level of play has stabilized of late. Even though Milan Lucic finished the game with a -2 rating, for example, he managed five shots on goal and five hits and was generally his old, noticeable self. Amazing the difference a healthy David Krejci can make! 

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The Buffalo Sabres have now lost 10 in a row, which anyone with half a brain could see coming from a mile away even when they were reeling off a decent record over a 14 game stretch on the back of .950 goaltending from Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth…

Next time a team starts the season at 10-3-1 despite icing a roster with four NHL caliber forwards *cough* Calgary Flames *cough* can we just point to the Sabres’ November as evidence that, yes, even brutal clubs can win some games over small sample of games?

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So Cody Hodgson logged all of 5:57 on Saturday night, while Drew Stafford similarly played fewer than 10 minutes. Ted Nolan, obviously, is trying anything he can to get his charges to compete. As if compete-level were the issue in Buffalo, not a complete lack of talent…

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Michel Therrien took out his forward line magic bullet and churned up his lines ahead of Saturday night’s tilt against the New York Islanders. Therrien’s new-look lines worked like a charm, as the Canadiens played one of their better games of the year in a thoroughly dominant 6-4 victory (it wasn’t as close as the score makes it seem).

Context is critical though: Dale Weise on the first line mattered a lot less than the Islanders playing their second of back-to-back games. Still, credit where it’s due: that might have been Montreal’s best 60 minutes of the year (at least, from what I’ve seen). 

In particular I really liked the look of the Lars Eller, Jiri Sekac, Christian Thomas line. They had some shifts where they moved the puck beautifully in the Islanders’ end. Ultimately they finished with a Corsi For percentage in the mid-to-high 60s. Hopefully they get a chance to stick together for a bit. Weise and Max Pacioretty? Not so much.

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The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Ottawa Senators 3-2, largely on the back of a stellar game from Justin Faulk. Faulk managed a goal, an assist, finished with a +3, threw a couple of hits and managed six shots in the contest. He was also the only Hurricanes skater who was legitimately above water by shot attempt differential on Saturday. 

Beast outing, both in terms of actual hockey value, and from a fantasy perspective.

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Carter Hutton’s evening: .250 save percentage and a goals against average over 14. I know he was a popular pick up on the waiver wire this week, but man, I’d imagine he cost an owner (or 10,000) their fantasy matchup this week.

Hutton was replaced by Marek Mazanec and he got beat from below the goal line…

Think the Predators might miss Pekka Rinne while he’s out for 3-5 weeks?

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Overshadowed by Nashville’s goaltending issues: Tomas Tatar’s 20th goal of the season. I don’t think he’s likely to get to 40, particularly because his shot rate has fallen off. Still, he’s generating looks at a bona fide top-line rate this season and is in the top-20 in even-strength scoring rate. 

He made a fantastic defensive play early in the game too, to spring Riley Sheahan on Gustav Nyquist’s game opening goal.

Seriously, Tatar is a machine. Barring injury, I feel like he’s about to reel off consecutive 30 goal seasons like clockwork for a half decade here…

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Nathan MacKinnon has had something of a nightmare sophomore season, but finally had a signature moment on Saturday when he scored to tie Colorado’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning with just six seconds to play. MacKinnon finished the game with a goal, an assist, a +2, six shots on net, and two hits. 

I know that MacKinnon has been not quite right this season as a result of a nagging lower-body injury – but I still think he’s a solid bet to get hot in the second half. Among the 337 forwards who’ve logged at least 300 minutes this season, Mackinnon has the seventh best even-strength shot rate in the entire league and the 298th best shooting percentage (at even-strength). He’s been snake bit to an extreme degree, and is poised to light it up in the second half.

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Some controversy surrounded Nail Yakupov on Saturday when he finally received the opportunity to take the first shootout attempt of his career. He scored on it – a beautiful goal on Roberto Luongo – and the goal held up as the game winner.

After the contest, some in the Edmonton media – pivotting off of a Todd Nelson quote – sought to spin Yakupov’s goal as a victory for ‘the hunch’ over ‘analytics’. Whatever.

An NHL player scoring a goal on a shootout attempt is a 33% proposition. So, yeah, drawing any data or substantive inferences from the result of one shootout attempt is insane. 

What we can comment on is Nelson’s decision making. I’m torn on this because Edmonton isn’t a playoff team, so getting Yakupov some confidence, and getting him going, is more important to their long-term interests than maximizing their chances of accruing an additional points in the skills competition.

From that perspective: Nelson made a smart play. Yakupov got the opportunity to flash his bluechip skill level, and the Oilers won – cool.