The Predators still have to deal with a big chunk of their cap space being eaten up by buyouts and salary retention.

The Nashville Predators had a free agency to remember. They have been the talk of the past week and a half and are expected to be much better than last season in which the team was eliminated in the first round.

While there were major adds like Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, Brady Skjei, and the Predators extended or re-signed Juuse Saros and Alexandre Carrier, Nashville is now at the cap ceiling and may have to make a move. While Barry Trotz did an incredible job improving the Predators, the team is still hindered by four cap hits from players who are no longer playing in Nashville.

This quick and impactful turnaround by the Predators wasn't exactly expected. There was a ton of money available and buying out players as well as retaining money on trades didn't seem like a big issue. All of a sudden, it is holding the Predators back from being so much more.

Nashville is Using Too Much Money on Former Players

Between the buyout hits of Matt Duchene and Kyle Turris as well as the retained salary on the trades of Ryan Johansen and Mattias Ekholm, the Predators have $11.8 million less to spend next season on players who will play for them. That's 13.4% of the cap.

Duchene, now playing for the Dallas Stars, was bought out prior to the 2023-24 season after a decline in offense. His buyout hit is $5.55 million for the 2024-25 season. It goes up $1 million the season after before dropping to around $1.55 million for the final two years.

It was less of thinking he couldn't help anymore and more of the team just moving in a new direction. He bounced back nicely on the Stars last season on a $3 million AAV contract, but there's no guarantee he would've put up a 25-goal, 65-point season in Nashville.

While the Duchene contract wasn't necessarily a mistake, Turris' was. Just two years into a six-year, $6 million AAV deal, he was bought out. His cap hit remains $2 million each year for the next four. Turris scored a total of 16 goals and 54 points in 117 games the first two years of that big contract he signed.

Johansen signed an eight-year, $8 million AAV contract with the Predators and almost made it through the whole deal. He signed after a season and a half in Nashville, scoring 22 goals and 95 points in 124 games. Johansen's time with the Predators was up and down, but the same offseason that Duchene was bought out, Johansen was traded to the Colorado Avalanche with 50% of his cap hit retained ($4 million AAV).

Johansen didn't have a very good year as the expected second line center and was traded at the deadline to the Philadelphia Flyers where he was buried in the minors. The Predators still have the $4 million cap hit on their books for one final year.

The retention of the Ekholm trade isn't bad at all, but had to be included since the $250,000 is still on the books for two more seasons. It was a necessary retention to pull off the trade with the Edmonton Oilers that brought in Reid Schaefer and a 2023 first-round pick (Tanner Molendyk).

The cap hit of these four combined drops to $8.8 million in 2025-26 and then $3.55 million for two more years. The cap is also going up now, so the Predators will increasingly have more to work with as the team is in a window to win now.

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