I was listening to Barry Melrose’s weekly podcast, the Melrose Line, yesterday afternoon and wrote down an interesting point he concluded the show with. Barry said (quite emphatically, may I add) that the first 20 games is all you need to judge how a team will perform this season, kind of like a report card. I immediately thought to myself that it would be fun to apply the Melrose theory to the Nashville Predators. At the end of the season, I’ll take a look back at this very blog and we can see if Barry’s theory was correct.

Including Monday nights 3-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings, the Nashville Predators are ranked 9th in the NHL with 27 points in 22 games (13-8-1). Not to shabby for a team that was at the bottom of the standings a few short weeks ago. The entire roster is healthy, players such as J.P. Dumont and Jason Arnott who had missed games earlier in the season are back in action and contributing to the Predators offense. On the heels of getting their 6th consecutive win, I’d have to give the team a B/B- right now.

The Predators have scored 53 goals and given up 57 goals this season. If the Predators want to stay in the top ten for any length of time, they’ll need to keep the goals against down and light a fire under the offense. If the Predators stay in the top half of the standings come the trade deadline, I think they’ll have to strongly consider making a deal for top tier scorer if they want to make it deep into the playoffs. Snatch up a scorer headed into free agency from a team that isn’t going to see the post-season and keeping the goaltenders healthy are going to be the 2 big factors that will determine if Nashville can translate this 9th place B-rated squad into a cup contender come spring.

Maybe Barry is onto something. Guess we’ll just have to wait until spring to see if that head head of his carries more than just the world’s greatest example of hockey hair.