Things haven’t gone to plan for the Predators this season. After general manager Barry Trotz had the most active free agency period of anyone, adding top-six wingers Jonathan Marchessault and Steven Stamkos while landing Brady Skjei for their defense, they’re the only team in the league without 10 wins this season and sit firmly entrenched in 32nd place with a 9-17-7 record and .379 points percentage.
It’s a weird outcome for a roster in a weird place. The Preds haven’t been bad enough to contend for the draft lottery – far from it, in fact. They’ve made the playoffs every season since 2014-15, aside from missing in 2023, and they still managed a 42-win regular season that year. But they’ve also lost six consecutive postseason series and haven’t advanced past the First Round since 2018. With Trotz, their former head coach, taking over for David Poile as just the second GM in franchise history in 2023, he made it expressly clear that he was planning on making higher-risk moves to help propel Nashville out of league-average purgatory.
That plan has worked in the sense that they’re no longer wild-card fodder, and they now have the chance to draft a legitimate direction-altering talent in next year’s draft if their record holds. But if they continue down that road, it won’t be because they make significant in-season subtractions from the roster. Trotz reaffirmed to Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic yesterday that they’ll continue to be active on the trade market but won’t act like traditional sellers.
It’s not a rebuild. I’m not in the business of not winning. I’m in the business of trying to win. We’re not selling off. We are resetting. We know where we are. It’s not where we thought we would be. But we want to move forward.
Trotz’s sentiment, without spelling it out completely, says to expect more moves in the vein of this week’s swap that sent Alexandre Carrier to the Canadiens for the much younger Justin Barron. The latter is a player Trotz has had his eyes on since assuming the GM’s chair, telling LeBrun that he called the Habs about Barron multiple times last season. “We’ve been very good at developing defensemen, so I just felt he was getting underplayed there a little bit,” Trotz said. “Hopefully, with his age and talent, we can get a decent player out of that.”
Carrier may not be the only defenseman on the wrong side of 25 who finds himself on the move before deadline day. 6’3″ lefty Jeremy Lauzon, who’s under contract through next season at a $2MM cap hit, led the league in hits by a wide margin last season with 383. He’s missed time with injury this season, posting one assist and a -5 rating in 23 games, but should carry a decent amount of trade value on his own for his reasonable cap hit or be valuable in a package for a higher-value asset, maybe one that helps Nashville address its nagging center-ice deficiency.
There have been speculative ties to the Sabres’ Dylan Cozens in that vein. While that hasn’t been addressed by Trotz or reaffirmed by a major source, Trotz did tell Emma Lingan of The Hockey News during his media availability yesterday that he expects to use his $11.2MM in current cap space “if there’s the right piece.”
In his conversation with LeBrun, Trotz also vehemently denied the slow-growing, unfounded speculation that he may look to deal Stamkos elsewhere at the trade deadline. The longtime Lightning captain has heavily underwhelmed with nine goals and 19 points in 33 games on the season in the first year of a four-year, $32MM contract. He also has a full no-movement clause.
It’s worth noting that the Predators still have quite a few highly-graded prospects in the pipeline. They have six forwards in the system aged 22 or younger with first-round draft pedigree, although, as Trotz implied by his acquisition of the younger Barron, things are considerably thinner on the blue line.
Trotz can’t see that Brunette isn’t an NHL level coach?
Barry Trotz says he’s not in a full scale rebuild which okay, that’s fine. He may still be in the retooling process as it seems. But if this team doesn’t improve next season then a full scale rebuild will happen.
Truth be told, Nashville is the second oldest team in the league & it shows. Their championship window is a short one. I’ve said they have 2 years tops to capitalize on a championship with their current roster set up. They’re sure not making the playoffs this season. So next season is make or break for this franchise.
Their championship window is closed. It has been for awhile. They are super depressing to watch, and it’s worse up close.
You’d be hard pressed to point to a single solid GM decision made in the last 3-4 years. Brady Skjei might be the worst signing in recent memory, he looks cooked today and that’s like an eight-year deal. His OT turnover last night was something else. Stamkos was truly terrible at 5v5 last year, and that was on a good team. Now he’s like watching late-period Phil Kessel.
The shooting percentage for all of them is going to improve, but the stats match the eyeball test: they take a lot of low probability shots, and look slow all around.
I really think it’s time to acknowledge that they need to rebuild, and that includes the front office. Trotz was a great coach, but I think we have enough of a sample size already to say he’s in over his head as a GM, just like Poile was for his last five years here.
Sorry, let me be fair. The Tanner Jeannot trade was a heist, clearly.
One gets the feeling that Trotz is in over his head. The biggest mistake/problem he has is the coach he hired and he seems either unwilling or to stubborn to admit that.