Laviolette explains why Fiala rode the bench in the final 2 periods.

The Nashville Predators faced off against the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday night and although they walked away with a 5 - 3 victory over the Kings there were some questions coming out of the game. 

Perhaps the biggest question of the evening was the bizarre situation that seemed to develop between veteran Predators forward Kevin Fiala and Predators' head coach Peter Laviolette during the games 2nd and 3rd periods specifically. For whatever reason the 22 year old winger was used extremely sparingly during the final two periods of the game, seeing close to no ice time at all, raising more than a few eyebrows on the faces of careful observers. 

In total Fiala played in just 3 shifts during the final two periods of the game and given how unusual that is many suspected that there was more than met the eye. For one Fiala could potentially have suffered some kind of injury or discomfort during the match up and in that scenario Laviolette would simply have been shielding one of his players from a pretty tough Kings' squad, but that's not the only possibility that comes to mind of course.

Fiala's performance has also taken a bit of a dip this season with the young Swiss winger recording just 2 goals and 7 assists for 9 total points on the season. After a 23 goal and 25 assists performance last season that saw him register 48 total points in 80 games there were no doubt higher expectations placed on the young man's shoulders. To make matters worse Fiala has also been more undisciplined than usual with 10 penalty minutes already to his name and a plus minus rating of -7 on the season.

Nashville Predators beat reporter Adam Vingan asked Laviolette about this very situation on Sunday and the head coach's answer leads me to believe that the latter is the more likely scenario.

"Sometimes it's just the way the game's going inside of the lines and the numbers. We made a move and put Ryan Hartman up there, and all of a sudden they had a good shift and had another good shift. We went into the game with the thought of Calle and Kevin splitting power play time. Kevin for the first one, and Calle ended up getting the second one and looked good on it. We just stuck with it. It seemed to be working, so we made the switches."

Although this is purely speculation on my part, this seems to me like a head coach subtlety trying to send a message to a player that should be one of his consistent point producers and 3 shifts in two periods is certainly one way to get your point across. The fact that 27 year old center Calle Jarnkrok was getting some of Fiala's power play time, by Laviolette's own admission, is also an indication that Laviolette is trying to light a fire under his young winger. 

It may also be that after roughly a quarter of the way through the season that Laviolette is losing a little faith in Fiala as well.

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