If the Nashville Predators don't want a full rebuild, they are on the hot seat to turn their team around immediately. Can their new coach and GM make it happen?

We’re still in the dog days of summer, but there’s no diminishing pressure on the NHL’s players, GMs, coaches and team owners. It’s there all the year through, and it’s our focus in this ongoing THN.com hot seat series.

We’re looking at teams in alphabetical order and pointing out people on one type of the hot seat or another. One player, owner, GM or coach will be on the hot seat, signifying them as someone facing massive pressure to generate positive results in 2023-24 or find themselves in trouble. A second individual will go on the warm seat – pointing them out as someone who isn’t facing a firing or trade imminently but may have their time with their current team end sometime this season. A third person will be put on the cold seat, making them very likely to stay with their current franchise for a long time to come.

Predators’ Hot Seat: Andrew Brunette, Coach

Brunette followed up a solid playing career by moving into the coaching business in 2014 as an assistant with the Minnesota Wild. He moved on to Florida in 2019, and after coach Joel Quenneville was fired, Brunette took over as interim coach and guided the Panthers to a 51-18-6 record and a first-round playoff series win. However, rather than taking the ‘interim’ label off of his title, the Panthers went in another direction and hired Paul Maurice to take their reins. Brunette then moved to New Jersey as an assistant to Lindy Ruff, but he joined the Predators as their new coach in June of this year.

The problem for Brunette is that new Preds GM Barry Trotz does not seem interested in a full-on team rebuild, while Nashville’s roster looks significantly different this summer, with Ryan Johansen traded and Matt Duchene bought out. Trotz did sign UFA center Ryan O’Reilly and forward Gustav Nyquist, but there still isn’t an abundance of elite-level talent on the Preds’ roster, and they’re going to face an uphill battle to secure a wild-card playoff berth in the Central Division.

Brunette does have the security of a four-year contract with the Preds, but we all ought to know by now that the shelf life of coaches can be much shorter than their contract. With Trotz looking at him under a microscope, Brunette will be under pressure from Day 1 to produce a winner in Nashville. If he doesn’t, a year from now, he’ll be under considerably more pressure to take what Trotz gives him and turn it into a consistently-solid group.

Predators’ Warm Seat: Ryan McDonagh, D

McDonagh’s first season in Nashville last year wasn’t what you’d call a smashing success, although he did average 21:31 of ice time – second only to star blueliner Roman Josi. But McDonagh’s 2022-23 season saw him register only two goals and 20 points in 71 games as he played on the Preds’ second defense pairing. With a salary cap hit of $6.75 million, McDonagh did not produce the way the team had hoped – and this year, at age 34, he’s Nashville’s oldest player and has a contract with three years left on it.

Trotz went out on the UFA market and signed veteran Luke Schenn to play alongside Josi on Nashville’s top defense pairing, and Brunette may trim down McDonagh’s time-on-ice average to keep him as fresh as possible later in the season. But if McDonagh doesn’t perform to expectations, we can see Trotz look to find him a new home for his final two years. A contract buyout isn’t an option for the Preds, as they already have the maximum allowance of two buyouts (Duchene and Kyle Turris) for the next five seasons. But as Trotz demonstrated in the Johansen trade, retaining a portion of a player’s salary is an option the Preds will consider with any player no longer pulling their weight.

On a better team, McDonagh could still provide valuable experience. But on this middling Predators squad, he may no longer be a good fit

Predators’ Cold Seat: Barry Trotz, GM

Trotz is beloved in the hockey community for good reason: he’s a terrific communicator, dangerous tactician, and savvy judge of talent. Some were shocked to see him forego a return to coaching in favor of taking the GM job in Nashville, but he’s got all the cachet an incoming GM can have – a guy who has won a Stanley Cup and who is a proven winner. 

His willingness to move Preds Johansen and Duchene served notice to the rest of the Predators that he’ll make any move he deems necessary to rejuvenate a stale roster, and it may take all of this year for him to completely sculpt the roster to suit his tastes.

Preds fans will be happy to give him all the time he needs to make over the lineup, and if at some point he does decide a full rebuild is required, Trotz will have few critics of that decision. He’s a proven commodity and a great ambassador for the sport, and he’s got all kinds of landing strip to get this franchise back on a positive track.