Trade deadline pickup Anthony Beauvillier is interested in signing an extension with the Predators, per a report from David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period. An agreement doesn’t appear imminent, but they’ve had positive initial discussions.
It’s no surprise that Beauvillier wants to stick in one place this summer. He was traded twice this season, splitting 2023-24 between the Canucks and Blackhawks before heading to Nashville a day before the deadline. Overall, he’s suited up for four teams over the past two years, as he headed from the Islanders to Vancouver in last season’s Bo Horvat blockbuster swap.
Also unsurprisingly, his unsteady campaign yielded some disappointing numbers on the scoresheet. The former 20-goal scorer lit the lamp only five times in 60 games this season, a career-low. He added 12 assists for 17 points with a -8 rating, a difficult showing for the pending unrestricted free agent. He turns 27 early next month.
It’s not like he had a late-season turnaround with the Preds, either. After general manager Barry Trotz sent Chicago a 2024 fifth-round pick to acquire the longtime Islander, he averaged 12:17 per game through 15 contests and had a goal and two assists with a -6 rating. He played a similarly limited top-nine role in the postseason, logging a goal and an assist in their six-game loss to the Canucks while playing just over 13 minutes per game.
Coming off a tough year, he shouldn’t cost too much to extend. Evolving Hockey projects a three-year, $2.8MM AAV deal for Beauvillier to remain in Nashville. That could be a solid bet for a player whose career numbers suggest a rebound campaign is on the way in 2024-25.
His biggest outlier this season was his shooting percentage. Beauvillier’s reduced usage did mean he wasn’t generating as many shots on goal, averaging 1.75 per game compared to 2.15 last season. But he finished at just 4.8% in 2023-24, far below his 10.9% career average. He also shot over 13% three times with the Isles, although he hasn’t finished at that rate since 2020-21.
Beauvillier isn’t exactly a two-way force, but his possession numbers haven’t been close to liability territory, either. His career 47.6 CF% at even strength is exactly in line with the averages of the teams he’s played on, and his career 49.2 xGF% is subpar but not awful.
Over his eight-year, 550-game career, Beauvillier has accumulated 116 goals and 130 assists for 246 points. That works out to a 17-goal, 37-point average in an 82-game season – fine numbers for a run-of-the-mill third-line winger. He did have a career-high 40 points split between the Isles and Canucks just one year ago.
He doesn’t move the needle much for a Predators team that struggled with impactful depth scoring this season, but he is a rebound target that wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive to retain and has more offensive upside than some of their other currently projected third- and fourth-line wingers. With $26MM in projected cap space this offseason (CapFriendly), a lack of funds won’t be an issue if they decide to kick extension talks into high gear.
Would rather keep Zucker than Beauvillier, but Zuck may be looking for a bigger payday.
@Gbear — Do you get the feeling that maybe Nashville’s focus is “off”, so to speak? They’re worried about Beauvillier? Surely they won’t have a team of Forsberg’s top line, then three other lines of 4th liners. Either that, or we’re going to have a slow news day.
To be fair, I interpreted the report as Beauvillier being the catalyst in the talks, not the NSH FO
@Mac – I suspect next years Preds roster will have a very Milwaukee Admirals look to it. Whether some of those kids are ready or not is the big question.
The predators are such an anomaly. They don’t even seem to be trying to rebuild on the fly. They build mediocrity and it must be incredibly frustrating to be a preds fan. They even seem to make weird picks in the draft outside of players that are defencemen. I mean Svechkov, Wood both seem to top out at decent 2nd liners. I think it’s time to commit to a full rebuild
@Josh — Kind of like a guy who goes up to the front door and says, “Hi, I’m applying for the Help Wanted ad you had in the paper”? Only to be told, “We didn’t have an ad in the paper.”
That would make a big difference, as far as this story is concerned.
Haha, I’d imagine it’s not that extreme. Initial talks were positive, so you’d have to imagine there’s a mutual interest. I just wouldn’t characterize it as him being their top priority.