The Nashville Predators have not had the season they had hoped for through the early stages of the 2024-25 campaign. While they pushed the Vancouver Canucks to overtime on Monday, they have sputtered to a 5-6-3 start and sit sixth in the Central Division heading into Tuesday’s action.
Two summers after former head coach and current general manager Barry Trotz signed Steven Stamkos and other stars, the plan has not worked.
On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Jeff Marek from The Sheet with Jeff Marek joined hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to break down what moves could come if things don’t improve.
Yaremchuk: What kind of decisions do they have? Because Filip Forsberg had a full no-movement clause. You have Forsberg, Roman Josi and Juuse Saros, that’s the core of that team, but those are kind of the only three guys who I think would get you, like, a true haul, right?
Then there’s Steven Stamkos, and you’d have to keep money, and can a GM go to a new owner and be like, ‘hey, you know that guy we just spent a bunch of money on, can we trade him for a pick?’
Marek: That goes to my other point about Barry Trotz… you’re going back to your owner and essentially saying, if you want to fire the coach and bring someone else in, it’s like, well, hold on a second, I’m not really in the business of paying someone not to work. You’re the most successful coach in the history of this organization. You broke it, you buy it, it becomes yours.
If Nashville ultimately decides to go the rebuild route, we think about Brady Martin and Tanner Molendyk, and Teddy Stiga, but it’s not as if they are flush with a whole bunch of A-listers that are going to walk in tomorrow. This isn’t the San Jose Sharks or the Chicago Blackhawks.
The question becomes, if you’re going to rebuild, how quickly can you get there? The one player that I perhaps wonder about here the most is again, Forsberg. You can ask a player to go through a rebuild once. But, given how short careers are, it’s not fair to ask a player to go through a rebuild twice. That’s why I think you go to Filip Forsberg, and you say, Look, you’ve been through it before with us as we put all of this together, but we’re going to tear it down, given where you’re at in your career right now? Do you have the stomach for this? Because it is going to be years of pain before we get back, and who knows where you’re going to be at the end of all of it.
That’s the conversation you have with your veterans, the guys with the no-move clauses.
You can catch the rest of the Predators segment and the entire episode right here…