Nashville’s aggressive offseason shifts the fantasy landscape. Discover why a discounted Juuse Saros offers elite value while Mavrik Bourque prepares for a top-six starring role in Music City.
Puck drop is nearly here, and with training camps opening across the league, it's officially fantasy draft season. It's been a busy offseason, full of blockbuster trades, big-name signings and roster overhauls that are only just starting to settle.
We're going team by team to help you prepare, flagging a sleeper worth stashing, a breakout candidate ready to take off, and a bust that might not be worth the price you'll pay to draft him. Next up: the Nashville Predators.
Nashville showed real improvement last season, finishing 38-32-10 for a significant jump from the previous year's 68-point finish, but it still wasn't enough to end a two-year playoff drought, with the Predators finishing four points shy of a wild-card spot.
A slow start, going a combined 8-13-4 through October and November, proved too much to overcome in a stacked Central Division, even with Steven Stamkos leading the team with 40 goals and Ryan O'Reilly and Filip Forsberg both reaching 73 points.
With ownership still weighing whether to pursue a full rebuild or a quicker retool, Nashville's direction heading into 2026-27 remains one of the more unsettled situations in the league.
Sleeper: Juuse Saros
This one isn't so much about where Saros is being drafted, since he's going roughly around the same spot he finished last season, at 106th overall, and could easily land there again.
He's listed as a sleeper because of who's going ahead of him: Jakub Dobes, who may have to fight for his own starting job with Jacob Fowler, and Sergei Bobrovsky, who is coming off a down season and might not see much improvement at 37 years old. Saros will likely finish in the range of his average draft position, but he presents a far stronger case than either of those names going ahead of him.
He's coming off a down season of his own, as despite Nashville's improved play and near-miss on a playoff spot, Saros posted the worst numbers of his career with a 3.1 goals-against average and a .894 save percentage. Nashville's improved offense still helped him rack up more wins than the year before, and with an offseason to regroup, just like his team did, Saros looks like the better bet compared to the names being drafted ahead of him.
Breakout: Mavrik Bourque
The Dallas Stars had a future in mind for Bourque, but a cap crunch left the perennial Cup contender no choice but to deal the former first-round pick to Nashville. The Predators got excellent value, surrendering only a second- and third-round pick in the process.
Bourque spent last season with Dallas in a middle-six role, finishing with a solid 41 points in 82 games, and his role is only expected to grow in Nashville. He'll move into a top-six spot, trade Matt Duchene for elite linemates like Filip Forsberg or Steven Stamkos, and see time on the second power-play unit, giving him every opportunity to build on his solid sophomore season.
He's currently rostered in just nine percent of Yahoo leagues and will likely go very late in drafts, if he's taken at all, making him a strong waiver-wire target depending on how Nashville starts the season.
Bust: Steven Stamkos
The 36-year-old Markham, Ontario, native is coming off a respectable 66-point season, his best goal total since 2021-22, when he scored an identical 42 goals. Expecting him to clear the 40-goal mark again as he continues to age is a stretch. He'll have some exciting young talent on his line in Bourque, but some regression looks likely for Stamkos.
While some outlets are still projecting another 40-goal, 60-point campaign, a more realistic outcome sits closer to his 2024-25 numbers, when he finished with 27 goals and 26 assists for 53 points. His overall point total may end up similar to last season, but the goal-scoring is likely to take the bigger hit, and with it, his fantasy value.
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