Do the Nashville Predators retool or rebuild? Should they move on from their top players? Adam Proteau addresses those questions and more.
Earlier this past week, the Toronto Maple Leafs showed us there are plenty of surprises ahead in the coming NHL off-season. And one of the teams some people expect to see big decisions from in the 2023-24 campaign is the Nashville Predators.
Nashville has often defined the “mushy middle” of the NHL – too consistently subpar to be a front-runner for a Stanley Cup and too good to be a team with the best chance to win the league’s draft lottery.
The Preds are getting about as serious a change this off-season as there can be for a team – the beginning of a new era with a new GM.
In this case, the new GM situation is made more complex by the return to Nashville from veteran coach Barry Trotz, who comes back (officially, on July 1) not as the bench boss this time around but instead in the GM position, replacing franchise cornerstone management member David Poile.
In this writer’s opinion, Trotz and the Predators have to deal with a handful of key issues in the immediate days and weeks ahead. Here they are:
1. Retool or Rebuild?
This decision is the overarching issue that will inform all other decisions, including the ones we’ll list below. It’s painful to continue saying this about the Predators, but they simply don’t have the type of elite franchise players to battle it out with the Colorados, Dallases and Edmontons in the Western Conference. And they’re not going to acquire them via trade or free agency.
The only way a team can do so is via the draft, and although it’s promising to have 12 draft picks – including two first-round picks – in the system after this summer’s draft, it was worrisome to hear Trotz talk about the balance of talent between seasoned veterans and young players in Nashville is something they could build on.
We think the hiring of Trotz is a goodwill move that buys them enough time to tear it down almost completely and build, slowly but surely, toward a more thoroughly elite team at the NHL level. Just spell it out to Preds fans, and they’ll abide by the lean years.
2. What to Do with Juuse Saros and Roman Josi?
The natural instinct is to keep both Josi and Saros, two perennial all-star candidates who are a known quantity and who are relatively low-paid, at least in comparison to some of their peers.
Saros is signed for three more years at $5 million per season, while Josi is signed through 2027-28 at a cap hit of $9.059 million, per CapFriendly. Teams must be able to make a trade work cap-wise, but the talent of Josi and Saros could be the final piece of the puzzle for a true Cup contender and thus bring Nashville a king’s ransom on the trade front.
Indeed, the Preds could turn Josi and Saaros into multiple draft picks, elite young players and other assets they could flip for more help down the line. It would be painful to bid the two franchise icons goodbye, but that’s what a basement-to-roof rebuild does to you. Short-term pain, long-term gain. Nashville needs multiple young assets for the next competitive cycle, and you can land many of those in what would be blockbuster deals for Josi and Saros.
3. Investigate the Market for Matt Duchene and Ryan Johansen
As per CapFriendly, Josi has a full no-trade clause in his contract. But that doesn’t mean Trotz doesn’t have options to make big moves.
Two of his top forwards, Duchene and Johansen, both make the same amount of money (with a cap hit of $8 million per year), and both veterans have no form of no-trade or no-move clause in their deals. Johansen is signed through the 2024-25 campaign, and Duchene is under contract through the 2025-26 season, so the long-term impact isn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
Teams are going to see Johansen and Duchene as complementary components, not core players, and the Preds have to temper expectations in trades that will be mostly about making Nashville flush with cap space for better players down the line. They’ll still be able to land something decent on the cap front, but the key here is cap flexibility. Trotz will want as much of a wide net to cast into the NHL’s talent waters, and he could help himself in that regard by moving on from Duchene and Johansen.
4. Decide On the Coach for Next Season
Current Predators coach John Hynes may get another chance to show what he can do next season with a new administration and, most likely, some new faces on the ice. But would anyone really be stunned if Trotz decided to move on from Hynes and install his own choice behind Nashville’s bench? That’s the modus operandi of new GMs.
Some may suggest Trotz hire himself as coach and become the Preds’ coach-GM. Anything is possible, but it’s clear the modern-day GM job – and the coaching job, for that matter – requires full-time attention.
There’s a reason no team looks to the same person for both positions anymore. It’s too onerous. Trotz gets the chance to do what all GMs do and pick his own person for the role. Maybe he keeps Hynes around and fires him if the Predators stumble early next season. But maybe Hynes pulls a Lindy Ruff and swings back from the brink of total disaster.
Regardless, it will merit attention to see what direction Nashville heads in, both with their on-ice talent and their coaching and management teams. The degree of change may not be huge, but there will be the beginnings of an overall look for the team this off-season. Let’s see if Preds brass has the stones for a long rebuild. There’s no better time to embark on one than right now.