There is a Prince in Nashville, and his name is Filip. He just may be the first and youngest prince of Nashville, at the age of 21.
If you follow the Nashville Predators this may be nothing new to you. If you aren’t a fellow hockey fan, then you must take a sit and read.
Filip Forsberg has been the life-blood of this Nashville Predators team, currently holding the number one spot for the Wild Card in the Western Conference. The Predators have now tied a franchise team record by getting standing points in their last 10 straight games.
Now, I must not give all the credit to Scoresberg (one of his many nicknames), but the Prince has done just about everything you could want in a young forward.
He was acquired from Washington in 2013 in a trade that now looks like the worst trade I’ve ever seen. You have Forsberg, who has scored more goals in the past week then both Martin Erat and Michael Latta, previously on the team. Anyway, Forsberg has been a tremendous asset. He was named to the 2015 NHL All-Star game, where he scored a goal as a 20 year old. He was also voted to the NHL postseason NHL All-Rookie team. He finished with 26 goals and 37 assists for a combined total of 63 points. Did I mention he was only 20 at this time?
Onto this season: well, as of late, the Nashville Predators have been on a hot streak. The Preds are currently 4th in the Central Division with a 32-21-11 record, accumulating 75 points total. As mentioned earlier, the Preds do happen to currently hold the number one spot in the Western, but not by a large margin since the Minnesota Wild is only trailing by 7 points for the first spot.
Okay, okay. Let’s get back to the real reason you actually wanted to read this. Prince Filip is from Sweden, which you can tell in his many interviews he’s done after earning the game’s number one star in this past couple of games. You may be asking yourself, why was he the number one star of the game? In the past 22 games for the Predators, Forsberg has scored 15 goals with 2 hat tricks in the 3 games. Forsberg becomes the first player since the 1986-87 season to score two natural hat tricks in three games. Forsberg also made the franchise record books by becoming the first Predator to record two hat tricks in the same season.
The month of February was hot for the Prince. He set another franchise record with 12 goals in 11 games, which happened to be the most goals scored in that month. Forsberg is currently tied with his career best in goals at 26 from last season, and he is only seven goals away from the franchise record with plenty of games still left to go on the schedule. Forsberg was named by the NHL as their number one star of the last week of February, and received the third star of the entire month.
What Forsberg is doing for his team is amazing, but imagine how much the organization itself has received so much attention because of this young Swedish 21 year old. Forsberg has put this team on his back, and so far they seem to enjoy having the youngster be the star. Now only time will tell if everyone will let him cool off for a little and get hot for the post-season.
Thank you Filip; thank you for giving me a reason to finally write about something for the Predators. It’s about time the Predators are getting recognition. NFL, MLB and NBA are such a big market, while the NHL just gets overlooked. If the Preds keep playing with this hot hand, they could be a potential threat to any team they might face in the playoffs.
