3. Sneaky offseason additions<\/p>\n
Nashville is in a transition phase after Barry Trotz stepped down as general manager last season; the Predators hired Chris MacFarland as GM on June 2 after he held the same role with the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche. As Nashville continues to build around its elite players at each of the three positions (Forsberg, Stamkos, Josi, Saros), the team has made some under-the-radar additions that could pay dividends based on underlying metrics.<\/p>\n
Forward Mavrik Bourque<\/a>\u00a0(acquired from Dallas Stars) goes from one of the deepest teams in the Dallas Stars to Nashville, where he could get more consistent top-six usage and power-play time. Bourque, who set NHL career highs in goals (20), assists (21) and shots on goal (147) last season, has breakout potential with a chance to play much bigger minutes than he did in Dallas (14:09 per game, including 0:52 on power play, over his first 156 NHL regular-season games). Bourque was quietly among the forward leaders in high-danger goals (14; 87th percentile) last season despite limited usage.<\/p>\n The Predators also acquired forwards Ross Colton<\/a>\u00a0and Jack Drury<\/a>\u00a0in separate trades with the Avalanche, with each following MacFarland to Nashville. Colton ranked highly among forwards in hardest shot (94.11; 95th percentile), 20-plus mph speed bursts (194; 94th percentile) and long-range shots on goal (23; 93rd percentile), while Drury thrived in even-strength offensive zone time percentage (44.0 percent; 94th percentile). If Bourque, Colton and\/or Drury boost Nashville’s depth and finishing ability, the Predators have the foundation in place to quickly re-emerge as a wild-card contender in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3. Sneaky offseason additions Nashville is in a transition phase after Barry Trotz stepped down as general manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-857196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}