The Blackhawks have a quick turnaround from Friday’s loss at home to Washington, as they’re in Nashville on Saturday night to face the Predators.
It’s the second between meeting between these two teams this season, with Nashville taking two points in the first one with a 4-3 victory at the United Center over Thanksgiving weekend. That win was right around the time that the Predators turned things around from a woeful 6-12-4 start. In the five or six weeks since, Nashville is 14-7-0, surging from the depths of the NHL standings into the thick of the wild card chase, currently at 44 points (20-19-4) in 43 games, just ahead of Chicago’s 43 (18-19-7) in 44. Like Wednesday’s game against St. Louis, a regulation win this evening would see Chicago move ahead of a divisional foe in the standings.
Most of the names atop the statistical columns for Nashville are the expected ones. Ryan O’Reilly tops the team with 37 points (13 G, 24 A) in 43 games with Filip Forsberg (31 points in 43 games) and Steven Stamkos (28 in 43) also up there. Young forward Luke Evangelista is enjoying a breakout season with 31 points (6 G, 25 A) in 42 games, not far from his career high of 39 points in 80 games back in 2023-24. Roman Josi still leads the team in ice time and has decent enough production at 18 points (5 G, 13 A) in 31 games, although he’s far from the menace he was earlier in his career. The rest of the blue line is a largely older group that probably won’t terrify too many opponents. The primary source of Nashville’s success appears to be possession of the puck: it’s seventh in the league with a 52.23 percent shot attempt share at 5-on-5 play and 10th with a 51.35 percent expected goal share. The Predators typically have the puck more than their opponent and collectively generate enough scoring chances to keep things interesting. It’s a team that’s still closer to average than good overall, though.
Here was Nashville’s lineup from Thursday’s game against the Islanders, which was a 2-1 victory via the shootout:
Predators lines per @alexdaugherty.bsky.social Forsberg O'Reilly Stamkos Bunting Haula Evangelista Jost Svechkov Wood Schaefer McCarron Smith Josi Perbix Skjei Wilsby Hague Blankenburg Saros
— lineslineslines.bsky.social (@lineslineslines.bsky.social) January 8, 2026 at 6:43 PM
As for the Hawks, the flu bug that affected things on Friday night is still wreaking havoc, leading to the Hawks calling up goalie Stan Berezhnoy from Rockford, who could be in net after the other Rockford goalie, Drew Commesso, was called into action for the Hawks on Friday night. Berezhnoy has had a decent season in the AHL but he’s certainly far from NHL-ready, as Ben Pope of the Sun-Times, detailed on Twitter:
No word on any things related to the Blackhawks lineup as of this writing, so we’ll all likely be finding out who’s on the ice when the teams head out for warmups around 6:30 p.m. this evening. The lineup below is from Friday’s game against Washington, with Connor Bedard’s name on it the most encouraging sign — assuming he hasn’t acquired the flu bug since last night’s game ended.
Blackhawks lines….. Bertuzzi-Greene-Burakovsky Bedard-Moore-Lardis Teravainen-Dickinson-Donato Dach-Foligno-Slaggert Vlasic-Murphy Kaiser-Levshunov Korchinski-Grzelcyk Commesso
— Greg Boysen (@gregboysen.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 6:40 PM
It’s another night with a far from ideal set of circumstances for the Hawks, with this being the second game in as many days offering yet another hurdle for this team to overcome on a path towards two crucial points in the standings, mostly to keep them away from the opponent. It won’t be easy, but that’ll just make the win more rewarding.
Let’s go Hawks.
P.S. The recap may not be posted until the morning due to some other sports things happening at the same time as this game.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Predators
47.59% (26th) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 52.23% (7th)
45.63% (30th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 51.35% (10th)
2.82 (24th) — Goals per game — 2.77 (25th)
3.16 (20th) — Goals against per game — 3.33 (26th)
47.0% (28th) — Faceoffs — 52.0% (6th)
23.0% (t-8th) — Power play — 19.7% (t-16th)
84.7% (3rd) — Penalty kill — 81.7% (11th)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 7 p.m. CT
Where: Bridgestone Arena, Nashville
TV: CHSN
Webstream: ESPN+/Hulu
Radio: WGN 720