Former Golden Knight Could Finally Be Healthy After Injury-Plagued First Season Away From Vegas

For the Vegas Golden Knights, Nicolas Hague is a player from the past.

For Nashville, however, he is still a significant part of the future.

The former Golden Knights defenseman is expected to be fully healthy when the Nashville Predators open training camp, giving Hague a clean slate heading into the second season of the four-year, $22 million contract he signed with Nashville after being traded by Vegas.

Predators general manager Chris MacFarland told reporters Tuesday that he expects the team to have everyone healthy when camp begins, which includes Hague.

That is notable after an injury-plagued first season in Nashville for the 27-year-old defenseman. Hague was limited to 15 points in 62 games during the 2025-26 campaign and missed time on three separate occasions, including the final six games of the season because of an upper-body injury.

Hague's departure from Vegas was one of the more significant salary-cap moves of the Golden Knights' 2025 offseason. Vegas traded the 2017 second-round pick to Nashville on June 30, 2025, receiving defenseman Jeremy Lauzon and center Colton Sissons in return. Hague subsequently signed a four-year, $22 million contract with the Predators, carrying a $5.5 million annual cap hit.

Now, more than a year removed from his Vegas tenure, Hague is preparing for another season in Nashville — and one that could go a long way toward determining whether the Predators ultimately get the player they believed they were paying for.

Hague spent his first six NHL seasons with the Golden Knights, appearing in 364 regular-season games and becoming part of the team's Stanley Cup-winning defense in 2023.

But his first year after leaving Vegas did not go according to plan.

And with training camp approaching, Nashville will be hoping a healthy Hague can look much more like the defenseman Vegas believed in when it selected him 34th overall in the 2017 NHL Draft.