What We Learned: How can the Nashville Predators bounce back?

NHL

They say all these teams that are sitting on mountains of cap space are just biding their time. Giving it a couple more weeks and then once we get around the end of August, the start of September at the latest, it's all gonna kick off.

Signings you wouldn't believe! Trades you couldn't imagine! All the squeaky wheels of trade demands and selloffs getting greased at once. You're gonna love it.

But one of the teams still hoarding cap space — somehow, 10 have at least $10 million to spend against the cap even into early August, untempted as they were by the smörgåsbord of middling free agents — is the Nashville Predators, with a shade over $10 million to spend. Isn't that interesting? The team that "won the offseason" last year, finishing with the third-fewest points in the league and setting themselves up for a real look-in-the-mirror situation this time around. And what have they done? They signed Nick Perbix, they traded for Nic Hague and Erik Haula. And that's it. They didn't even change the coach after Andrew Brunette led them — even if it was through no fault of his own, which is hard to believe — to the second-worst season in franchise history, a low point not seen since they were a brand new expansion team. And again, that's after they were the buzziest team in hockey all summer.

The guys they acquired are all, to one extent or another, players ranging between "decent" and "good," but those three acquisitions are not exactly the best way to inspire confidence that you can make up the 26 points that stood between the Predators and the playoffs several months ago.

It must be said, though, that the Predators suffered through some significant underperformances last season; as a team, they shot 8.8 percent, the lowest number in the league and a huge contributor to having just two players reach the modest total of 22 goals (Filip Forsberg's 31 and Steven Stamkos's 27). But even those numbers, lofty by team standards, were down a collective 30 from the year before, when Forsberg pushed 50 and Stamkos had 40. You could call that a function of the team being led, spiritually and in terms of ice time, primarily by guys on the wrong side of 30. It's a young man's league these days and if all your big offensive engines are that far along the downslope of the aging curve — let alone if a few too many of them need to be power-play shooters to reach their usual production levels — you're gonna open up the possibility that your goalscoring drops.

Then there's the shallow blue line (Roman Josi the clear No. 1, then a big drop in quality to Brady Skjei, then another one to Alexandre Carrier, whom they traded in December for Justin Barron) that probably contributed to the recent down years for Juuse Saros, whose save percentage dropped from .919 to .906 to .895 over the last three seasons. More worrying: Saros went from plus-45.5 to plus-7.5 to minus-4.7 goals saved above expected, meaning it's not necessarily just the thinning of the blue line that's causing him to decline, though again that's certainly not helping. Obviously they brought in Hague and Perbix to address this issue and there are certainly ways to maximize their effectiveness, but it's not a sure thing.

So just looking at the helicopter view here, it seems like their best path forward is to hope for some regression to the mean. They underperformed their expected goals totals by about 56.5 offensively (which in and of itself is incredible, really), and 17 defensively. So if they can tack 73 goals onto their goal difference, then yeah, okay, this feels like a playoff team. But that only brings them to plus-11, which puts them 14th in the league last year. They were still barely a 50-percent xG team, but that kind of underperformance doesn't really tell the whole story about why they were such a disappointment.

Because, if Saros bounces back to something closer to the borderline-Vezina level he once showed, to the point he's blowing xGA numbers out of the water? Then you're in business. If you can get him to 30ish goals saved above expected, which isn't even all that close to the monster numbers he was putting up in his prime, the Preds are in a position to push for one of the top spots in the conference. Granted, guys his age don't usually do that, but it's definitely on the table.

In theory.

In practice, the fact that all these Preds contributors have been trending down for a while, and they once again have one of the oldest rosters in the league doesn't inspire confidence that they get the huge bounceback we're talking about. I would definitely expect some, for sure. Even in rolling your eyes at the offseason to date — excepting once again the possibility that they add a forward with all that cap space, as long as they're not operating under a non-public but very real "internal budget" that means they can't actually approach the cap — you have to see a path where they're not even close to the third-worst team in the league. But barring some cap space weaponization, which itself becomes tough to do when some teams still have $20 million to spend and the Preds don't exactly have the best farm system in the league, it feels like the ceiling here is somewhere between "playing meaningful games after the trade deadline" and "grab a wild-card spot."

Given where the roster is, and therefore how many truly good years guys like Forsberg, Josi, Stamkos, et al have left, shouldn't the designs be grander than that? But maybe they can't be. And if that's the case, what are they really selling to their fans?

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Yeah I guess this isn't too hard to see playing out. Depends how they have out PP time.

Boston Bruins: This is basically the opposite of a surprise but the right move and good to see.

Buffalo Sabres: When the NHL's official projection for your best forward is 75 points, and your best goalie is considered a "deep sleeper?" Buddy, you're missing the playoffs.

Calgary Flames: Yeah I know. He's an RFA.

Carolina Hurricanes: This is the kind of thing I actually like; get out there and hold a damn grudge.

Chicago: You couldn't possibly mean this year.

Colorado Avalanche: Sorry but this shouldn't be allowed. Just like when the Hurricanes wear Whalers gear. It should be illegal!!

Columbus Blue Jackets: That's what's up. I'm so psyched to watch him this season.

Dallas Stars: To me, this seems bad.

Detroit Red Wings: What's interesting to me is that this is a great goalie who very obviously hit a wall down the stretch last season. I think the team in front of him is gonna score a lot of goals, but this year of development before he goes pro is gonna be massive.

Edmonton Oilers: Yeah, I bet!

Florida Panthers: That's a lot of guys from one team playing for one country.

Los Angeles Kings: This does not indicate a positive view from the fans.

Minnesota Wild: Yes. But can he do it with the Wild?

Montreal Canadiens: I'm just saying you might want to prepare for this possibility. This is the nexus of overperformance followed by a great offseason. The guys they brought in raise the floor. Is that alone enough to make the playoffs sustainable? I think so but I gotta leave some breathing room.

Nashville Predators: "Hey all they gotta do is win like 12 of 15 to start the year." Great idea. Why didn't they think of that?

New Jersey Devils: Yeah, lots of famous guys are named Jeremy. … What do you mean "the other name?"

New York Islanders: Definitely not what you want to read about your roster shakeup if you're the coach.

New York Rangers: This does not project confidence.

Ottawa Senators: Sometimes Fanatics screws up in a way that is good.

Philadelphia Flyers: Yeah this all checks out for me for "fan survey as team hopefully exits a rebuild."

Pittsburgh Penguins: Beyond compare? He's not even the third-best forward in his own franchise's history. All-time great but let's be serious.

San Jose Sharks: They're all getting traded to Colorado???

Seattle Kraken: The people who make social media hype stuff for the Kraken should have given this video to Buoy's family and said, "I think you should not keep this. You should destroy it."

St. Louis Blues: What if it's Vasily Zaitsev?

Tampa Bay Lightning: They shouldn't be allowed to name this award that because of the other award that has the same name.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Oh, I don't think they would ever in a million years do this kind of thing.

Utah Mammoth: They talked to two fans about what they think about the new team name and both said they were kinda disappointed but Mammoth isn't bad or anything. I think that's about right.

Vancouver Canucks: Now that's how you sell excitement to the fanbase: "wait and see, and maybe something happens."

Vegas Golden Knights: I think they'll expect it. It's on the schedule.

Washington Capitals: I really hope this works out. Could be a pretty exciting debut.

Winnipeg Jets: Might go 0 for 3 here.

Gold Star Award

Now that it's August, that means it's almost September, which means it's almost October. I'm really thinking about that a lot.

Minus of the Weekend

Positive vibes only.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "lanceuppercut75" is locked in:

to Chicago Blackhawks

David Perron RW / LW