Sometimes you look at the schedule and you see some teams have it worse than others. For example, last weekend the Nashville Predators had to play arguably two of the top five or six teams in the NHL, the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks, on the road on back-to-back days. That's a pretty tough thing to do, but you have to give Nashville a ton of credit, coming out of the two games with three points and pushing the Ducks to a shootout. Even in the Predators' 7-6 overtime win against the Kings on Saturday, in which they blew a three-goal lead late, you have to be amazed that the offense performed the way it did. After all, scoring seven goals on the Kings is nothing to sniff at.
What amazed me most about that game against the Kings is the Predators showed they can win those crazy games that happen once in a while. The Predators can't give up six goals every night and win, no team can, but it used to be that if you scored four goals on Nashville, you had the game won. If you scored three, you probably had it won. Under Peter Laviolette that's no longer the case. Players like Mike Riberio and James Neal have given that team an offensive edge didn't have before, and unlike the Barry Trotz era when the team was completely dedicated to defense, the offense takes chances now. The forwards cheat a little bit. Every great offensive player cheats a little bit, for example leaving the zone a hair early when they think the puck is going to come loose. If the cheats aren't outrageous, you can get away with it and create offense, and Nashville is doing that.