During Wednesday's Game 1 matchup against the Chicago Blackhawks, James Neal tied a Nashville Predators playoff record by registering nine shots on goal. Calder Trophy candidate Filip Forsberg, who fired seven pucks on net, set a new franchise mark for shots by a rookie in a postseason contest.
NHL playoffs 2015: Colin Wilson puts slump behind him with strong Game 1
On a night when their first line didn’t score, the Predators’ depth forwards, including Colin Wilson, stepped up in a big way.
Frederick Breedon/Getty Images
And yet, neither found the score sheet.
These two first line wingers, along with center Mike Ribeiro, regularly determine how their team will fare. When they convert at a high clip, Nashville is extremely difficult to beat; when they struggle to find twine, as they frequently did in March and April, the Preds tend to fare poorly.
But, despite their lack of points, the latter was not the case during Nashville’s first playoff appearance since 2012 -- a bad second period notwithstanding. Unlike what we often saw as the Preds limped to the regular season finish line, secondary scoring gave them a legitimate chance to win.
Colin Wilson lit the lamp twice -- once off a clean shot from the left circle, once by deflecting a Seth Jones wrister from the right point -- and Viktor Stalberg, a former Blackhawk, got on the board by taking advantage of a woeful Corey Crawford blunder.
What’s more, Wilson got several good cracks at a hat trick and set up the best opportunity Nashville got against Darling, and Stalberg authored another high-quality chance, as well.
The end result wasn't what Nashville wanted -- Chicago won 4-3 in double overtime -- and blowing a 3-0 lead has to make this loss especially difficult to swallow. Nevertheless, the offense provided by Wilson, Stalberg and other depth forwards like Matt Cullen (one assist, four shots) has to be encouraging.
Although it’d be unwise to expect a lot from Stalberg and Cullen, Wilson is good enough to be an X-factor in this series -- as evident by the 17 goals and 19 assists he tallied in his first 49 games of 2014-15.
This success didn’t spill over into the home stretch, however, as the Boston University alum tallied just four points from Feb. 19 through the end of the regular season. Prior to Wednesday, he had gone 15 straight games without scoring.
Quite a rough patch for a guy who was tied for the most points in the NHL from Dec. 22 through Feb. 6.
This raises the question: What caused Wilson’s production to fall so much? To find answers, I broke down some of his key statistics into two bins. All numbers are at even strength only.
| P/60 | Shots/Game | Scoring Chances/Game | Corsi For% | Sh% | On Ice Sh% | PDO | Rel. Zone Start % | |
| Oct. 9 - Feb. 18 | 2.6 | 1.83 | 2 | 56.3 | 14.1 | 10 | 104.5 | 10.1 |
| Feb. 19 - April 11 | 0.6 | 1.5 | 1.71 | 53.9 | 5.9 | 3.8 | 97.2 | 15.9 |
A few things stand out right away -- including his shooting percentages and PDO. In short, many of Wilson’s rates were unsustainably high during the first half of the season, and unsustainably low during the second half. No one should expect a 3.8 on-ice shooting percentage to stay in that range for an extended period of time.
So yes, luck is a factor here.
That said, Wilson’s play also deteriorated. His shot generation dipped from Feb. 19 onward. He no longer averaged two scoring chances per game. And his possession numbers, though still solid, went down despite an uptick in offensive zone starts.
Essentially, Wilson’s fortune worsened as his performance diminished -- not unusual for someone mired in a lengthy slump.
It’s impossible to say if his Game 1 showing is a sign of what’s to come, as it’s a microscopic sample in the grand scheme of things. But he’s a better player than a lot of his recent stats would suggest. And, based on the eye test alone, he looked far better against Chicago than he had of late.
If Wednesday proves to be the start of some much-needed regression, and if Wilson corrects the issues that plagued him over the last couple months, he could be a difference-maker for a Predators team that hopes to enjoy a short summer.
See More:
