You can calibrate and profile your monitor all you want (but do be sure to set screen and ambient brightness as well as the color tones to industry standards).
You can do printer calibration all you want.
You can soft proof all you want.
But my experience has been that with very dark images the prints you wind up with are almost always darker than the image you see on the monitor. It seems that most printers use the very darkest areas of the image to make up the stop or so difference between our typical decently-high-quality 8-bit monitors and the best inkjet papers available.
The closest prints I have found to what I see with a dark image on the monitor are made on light sensitive (NOT inkjet) metallic photo paper. I get mine done by one of the largest photo printing services in the U.S. They currently use 'Kodak Endura Metallic Paper'. I have to boost exposure by about 1/2 stop from what I see on my monitor (before the boost) with a mostly dark image to get a print back that looks like what I saw on the monitor. When I do that, though, the subtle differences are there in the dark areas of the image.
I've yet to actually calibrate anything, though the Spyder is waiting for me to do the monitor.
If you haven't calibrated/profiled your monitor you are just shooting in the dark. Most uncalibrated/profiled monitors are set WAY too bright.
Almost all monitors are shipped with the contrast and brightness set to 100% because when they are sitting next to each other in a store most people think the brighter monitor looks "better." When they are new most monitors need brightness and contrast settings of about 50% to be correct. As monitors age the brightness and contrast settings need to be gradually increased to get the same output levels.
(P.S. I have my IPS LCD monitors set to output at 120 cd/m² at pure white. A typical new monitor comes from the factory putting out about 250-300 cd/m² when set to 100% brightness.)
