As the holiday season approaches, PHR will be taking a look at what teams are thankful for in 2023-24. There also might be a few things your team would like down the road. We’ll examine what’s gone well in the early going and what could improve as the season rolls on for the Nashville Predators.
Who are the Predators thankful for?
Saros is a franchise goalie, even if he hasn’t been playing like one this year. The 28-year-old has struggled to start the season and is in danger of finishing with a save percentage below .914 for the first time in his career as he currently sits at a .908 save percentage.
Save percentage doesn’t always paint a clear picture of a goaltender’s level of play, however, a deeper dive into Saros numbers shows that his Goals Saved Above Expected is sitting at -3.2 according to Money Puck. To give that number some context, Saros finished last season with a Goals Saved Above Expected of 46.7 which led the league and was well above Vezina Trophy winner Linus Ullmark.
Saros may have struggled in 25 games this year, but his body of work over the last seven years is hard to ignore. He has been in the conversation for the Vezina Trophy in each of the last three years and basically willed the Predators into the playoffs in two of those three seasons.
The most incredible thing about Saros play is that at a time when teams are coveting taller goaltenders, Saros has put up elite numbers while standing just 5’11″ tall and weighing just 180 pounds.
If Saros can find his game this season, it could be a real game-changer for a team that has been able to remain in the playoff picture despite not getting the goaltending from Saros that they’ve become accustomed to.
What are the Predators thankful for?
The 2023 trade deadline.
The Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators made a trade back in March 2023 that couldn’t have been better for the Predators and worse for the Penguins. Pittsburgh sent a 2023 second-round pick to Nashville for Mikael Granlund and his $5MM cap hit. Granlund failed to fit in with the Penguins picking up just a goal and four assists in 21 games as Pittsburgh missed the playoffs for the first time since 2006. Granlund was then a salary cap dump in the Penguins’ move for Erik Karlsson in August. The trade was likely the move that sealed the fate for the Penguins’ previous management regime who were terminated shortly after the season. Nashville was the benefactor of a good draft pick, and valuable cap space that was at a premium at the time. They used the savings in the Granlund trade to re-tool this offseason with some veteran free agent additions.
The Granlund move was a solid piece of business but was hardly their most notable move. The Predators made a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning in which they moved forward Tanner Jeannot in exchange for Cal Foote and a 2025 first-round pick (Top 10 protected), a second-round pick in 2024, and a third, fourth and fifth-round pick in 2023. Jeannot was a very effective forward for the Predators but was in the midst of a down year and due an extension in the offseason. The trade raised more than a few eyebrows as Nashville was able to extract full value for Jeannot, and then some.
The Predators also moved on from long-time defender Matthias Ekholm when they dealt him to the Edmonton Oilers. In return, Nashville was able to acquire veteran Tyson Barrie, Reid Schaefer as well as a first-round pick in 2023 and a fourth-round pick in 2024.
It was likely a difficult decision for Nashville to make, but opting to move on from several veterans at last year’s trade deadline could pay massive dividends down the road and may allow Nashville to retool on the fly rather than going into a full rebuild. So far this season, they have been able to remain competitive while having improved their farm system in the process. It is something that few teams have been able to do and it’ll be interesting to see how Nashville fares going forward.
What would the Predators be even more thankful for?
A long-term direction.
The Predators had a very confusing offseason after having a spectacular trade deadline. Barry Trotz was brought in to run the club and he made some interesting moves to clear up the Predators cap situation by trading Ryan Johansen to the Colorado Avalanche in a retained salary transaction and then buying out the expensive long-term deal of Matt Duchene. The Johansen move made sense as he wasn’t anywhere close to an $8MM player, however, Duchene still had some value and was just a year removed from a 43-goal season. He was the Predators second-leading scorer last season on a team that struggled to put the puck in the net.
The thought was that perhaps Nashville was going to bottom out and go into a rebuild, however, Trotz quickly put that notion to rest on July 1st when he signed Ryan O’Reilly, Luke Schenn and Gustav Nyquist to multi-year deals that used up the savings on Duchene and Johansen.
In a vacuum, there was nothing wrong with the signings, but when coupled with the curious buyout of Duchene it made for a bit of a confusing offseason for many people looking at the situation from the outside. The Predators theoretically lost some offense in the flurry of transactions, and for a team that already had struggled to score goals, it was a bit of a headscratcher.
The good news is that the offense has improved dramatically this season, and the teams’ overall play has as well as they currently sit in a Wild Card spot in the Western Conference which has put the conversation about the team’s direction to bed for now. However, if they falter down the stretch it could start to become a question once again as they head into the summer of 2024.
What should be on the Predators holiday wish list?
A Tyson Barrie trade.
Barrie was a throw-in last year when the Edmonton Oilers traded with the Predators for defenseman Ekholm. Barrie and his $4.5MM cap hit were included in the deal so that Edmonton could make the money work and facilitate the deal. Since coming over to Nashville, Barrie has had nowhere close to the kind of offensive impact he was having at the previous NHL stops during his 13-year NHL career.
Barrie has reportedly asked for a trade in recent weeks and the Predators have given the veteran permission to seek one out with other teams. Barrie and Predators management have both commented to the media that they didn’t think he was a good fit with the Predators after Barrie was a healthy scratch.
Both sides would like to move on, and it would probably be best if they do. At 32 years of age Barrie probably still has a few more years of hockey left in him, and the Predators probably don’t want a player in their dressing room that is hoping to move on to a different organization.
The difficult spot for Nashville when it comes to a trade is that Barrie does come with a pretty big price tag and with just a goal and 10 assists in 28 games, he hasn’t been particularly good this season.
Ugh, the giant goalie thing again.
IMHO, the measure of a good goaltender is that he keeps pucks out of the net, not how many inches over six feet tall he is. I wouldn’t give a good goddamn if my goalie was as tall as Yoda, as long as he was making saves.
NHL goaltender might be the most fickle position in all of sports. These guys are wired different lol. One year they’re great, next year they don’t have it.
The position is confidence-based (says the former goaltender), and that can be an ephemeral thing. Never mind the pressure. Jacques Plante had a famous quote, many years back, along the lines of this: imagine you’re in your office, and you made a simple mistake. And suddenly a big red light goes off behind you, and a giant horn, and 19,000 people are screaming that you’re a bum and that you suck. And that’s what being a goalie is about.
@Nha Trang — And you know he would. “Jedi Master he is. Goals allowed, he does not!”
I think you might have noted this: goalies are like relief pitchers. There are handful that are elite year after year. The rest seem to be lights out for a year or two and then revert to being ordinary. Pressure has an effect. A starter can give up a second-inning homer and shut down their opponent the rest of the way. But if a closer gives up a home run… Forwards can make multiple mistakes and the defence and goaltender can bail them out. A striking case in a lack of confidence is Jack Campbell. I’ve seen highlights from AHL Bakersfield and right now most of his instincts are wrong.
@Jess the trip — Jack has seemed to me to have a very fragile psyche. He’s like the antithesis of Billy Smith or Grant Fuhr. It’s as though the slightest error gets processed in his mind as a catastrophe.
“Jack, settle down, that barely glanced off the outside of the post. It wasn’t going in.”
“But if I give up a single goal, we’re doomed.”
“No, Jack, but with that approach, I’d say you’re doomed.”
So the Preds were tired of being in the murky middle and never drafting in the top 10. Well, they’re in the murky middle yet again despite all the roster moves!
This league has such mediocrity that even the Preds could push for a playoff spot despite tearing the team up.
@Gbear — You know, it’s a shame we’re still this early in the season, with Nashville and where they are in the standings. They *might* keep at least a Wild Card spot, or even push for a top 3 position. But that’s just right now, in the present. Like many teams, though, if “Juice” were to get bit by the “i” word, they might have a struggle on their hands. The high-profile media honks shouldn’t try to gauge them by how the Avs, Golden Knights, or Stars are performing, but rather on their own merits. If they can find a way to dump Paper Maché Barrie, that would be a big improvement for them.
I don’t see Nashville that often but I expected a change in style from Hynes to Brunette. A lot of hitting in the games I’ve seen. The stats seem to confirm this. What are the biggest surprises in Nashville this year?
The Preds have been a physical team for the past couple of seasons, the big difference so far this season is they’ve won every OT game they’ve been in. They were 14-14-5 at this point last season, 19-14 this season.