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Preview: Predators at Thrashers (3/9)

Location: Philips Arena – Atlanta, Georgia

Game Time: 6:00 pm Central

TV: FSN

Radio: 104.5 FM

Records:

Nashville: 35-25-5 (75)

Atlanta: 28-26-10 (66)

The Injury Bug Strikes: Injuries to Shea Weber and Denis Grebeshkov have suddenly made the Preds’ overstacked defensive corps somewhat undermanned. At least two of the six defensemen playing on Tuesday (Sulzer and Franson) have spent significant time in Milwaukee this year. Furthermore, the defensive corps are so dangerously close to being undermanned that Wade Belak has been skating as a defenseman in practices. While Weber is – at the very best – merely day-to-day, Grebeshkov is most likely out for the next week or two.

Road Warriors? The Predators are 17-13-3 on the road this season, picking up 37 points, which is almost identical to their 18-12-2 record at home.  However, they’ve only managed to win 2 of their last 9 after tearing through the January Western Canada road trip.

Insane Stat of the Night: Thrashers right wing Nik Antropov is a has a plus-19 plus-minus rating, leading the Thrashers. While impressive in and of itself, the second place player on the team (Johnny Oduya, who was acquired a little over a month ago) has a plus-6. That’s right. Antropov has a plus-minus rating over three times higher of anyone else on the team. And no, it has nothing to do with Ilya Kovalchuk leaving…Kovy is a plus-1 on the season.

Pevs Makes Good: In 73 games with the Predators, Rich Peverley managed 7 goals, 13 assists and 20 points. In 103 games in Atlanta, he has 32 goals and 51 assists for a total of 83 points. In fact, Peverley is 2 points away from his first career 50 point season and 1 goal away from his first career 20 goal season. He has scored more points than any player on the Predators team this season.

1 to 400: Barry Trotz’s next win will be his 400th career victory. One should note that the more games Barry picks up, the closer he gets to losing that “for one team” qualifier. While the 400 win mark would make him only the 7th coach ever to win that many with one team, it would put him just 13 wins away from tying Jack Adams for 20th place in all-time coaching victories.