The Columbus Blue Jackets and Nashville Predators meet Thursday in NHL action at the Bridgestone Arena.

The Columbus Blue Jackets won just 33 games last season, but they’ve made the playoffs in each of the last four years. The Blue Jackets lost a lot of names from last year, including Alexander Wennberg, Marko Dano, Josh Anderson, Markus Nutivaara and Ryan Murray. Meanwhile, the Blue Jackets made some solid moves for Max Domi, Mikko Koivu, Gavin Bayreuther and Mikhail Grigorenko. Led by Pierre-Luc Dubois and Oliver Bjorkstrand, the Blue Jackets are a young team on the rise that should make some noise, but they’re in a tough division and don’t have a lot of room for error.  

The Nashville Predators won 35 games last season and saw their season end in the qualifying round. The Predators say goodbye to Craig Smith, Kyle Turris, Nick Bonino and Austin Watson. Meanwhile, the Preds added Luke Kunin, Erik Haula, Nick Cousins, Matt Benning, Brad Richardson and Mark Borowiecki. The Predators should be better with the health of Ryan Ellis and Viktor Arvidsson, while Matt Duchene should be able to build on what he did last year. If the Predators can get some decent goaltending this season, they’re a dark horse contender that will be worth keeping an eye on this season.  

The Blue Jackets are 4-10 in their last 14 road games and 1-4 in their last 5 overall. The Predators are 5-0 in their last 5 Thursday games and 4-1 in their last 5 vs. Metropolitan. The under is 3-1-2 in Blue Jackets last 6 overall. The over is 4-1 in Predators last 5 overall. The Blue Jackets are 5-25 in the last 30 meetings in Nashville and 16-42 in the last 58 meetings.

Both of these clubs have decent potential and need to get off to fast starts, but it’s the Nashville Predators that have the hire upside and have pretty much dominated the Columbus Blue Jackets over the years. I’m high on the Predators this season and will be watching them closely. I’ll lay the juice with the home team here.