STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - There was a lot of hope and optimism surrounding the Nashville Predators organization going into the 2024-25 season.
After making the playoffs during the 2023-24 campaign, the Predators stacked up on talent in the off-season, signing Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei in hopes of transforming into true contenders in the Western Conference.
The Predators also put their full faith in goaltender Juuse Saros as they signed him to an eight-year, $61.92-million contract and traded young goalie prospect Yaroslav Askarov to the San Jose Sharks.
Nashville's season should have been one of great triumph, but instead, it was one of immense despair.
To start the season, the Predators lost five straight games, and that broke the team from a mental standpoint. It created a hole, Ryan O'Reilly said in Sweden, where he's competing for Team Canada at the World Championship. Saros is also there with Finland.
“I think the expectation coming in was, you know, we're going to compete for a Stanley Cup, and then when we got on that hole,” Ryan O'Reilly said. “I think everyone got tighter. Everyone was working hard. I thought we worked really hard this year, but when you aren’t working together and aren’t on the same program, it's tough to get anything to go your way. And that's just what it was.
“We have a great group of guys, good system, our coaching staff was great. Once we got in our heads a bit, it was very tough mentally. You could tell we were kind of heavy mentally the whole year, that we were carrying more, and that part of it is that expectation.”
The season seemed to spiral out of control with their woes seemingly insurmountable to overcome.
The Predators had all the talent you could ask for, that wasn't the issue. The true issue lied with the team’s identity.
There was no cohesiveness, and the players learned that talent won’t automatically win hockey games.
“I feel like it was a lot of different things and different things at different times that kind of went wrong for us,” Saros said. “Even if you have all the talent on paper, it doesn't always work out on the ice. You've got to figure it out on the ice as well, so that's what we need to do.”
The underlying reason for that lack of cohesiveness between the team was due to plugging in all of these new players and maybe the Predators were more talented, but that doesn't necessarily translate to chemistry.
“We had a lot of new faces and by the time we started to build that chemistry, the hole was too big that we were in,” said O'Reilly. “That happens when you change new faces. We added great pieces; it just took too long to find that chemistry… There were a lot of things, but the biggest thing was it took us too long to find our identity and our chemistry.”
Identity is a word Saros and O’Reilly used when discussing the team’s most glaring problems.
When the Predators made the playoffs just one season before, they were a scrappy group with an underdog mentality. It was their strong identity and cohesiveness that propelled them into the playoffs.
That all seemed to change in the span of just a few months. In order for Nashville’s play on the ice to improve, things internally within the team must take a drastic shift.
“I think we got to get back to a working mindset,” Saros said. “We’ll see what changes happen this summer. We kind of have to build our identity again and build a foundation. I feel like everybody's hungry coming in the next year. I think that's a good thing. It's a hard league to win, so you need that mindset. You got to bring it every day, so that's all we need to do.”
NHL Rumor Roundup: Trade Stamkos? Go Young? What's Next For The Predators?
A season that began with high expectations for the Nashville Predators after a summer of notable free-agent signings will end in disappointment.
In these types of situations, typically the coach is used as the scapegoat and takes the majority of the blame.
However, the Predators decided to not fire coach Andrew Brunette, and he’ll return to Nashville next season.
That shows how much the organization and the players believe in Brunette and his system.
“You saw in the first year when his (Brunette’s) system was going the right way, how effective it was,” O'Reilly said. “He is a great coach in that way and found a way to win and have success. At the end of the day, a system is a system. It’s about the way we buy into it and work within the system.”
Predators GM Barry Trotz invested a lot into this core, and he likely won’t completely tear it down this summer.
With the core nucleus of players potentially remaining the same, we’ll see if the Predators could turn things around or if this team just isn’t made to contend for a Stanley Cup.
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