After 11 seasons with the Colorado Avalanche, the last four as general manager, the 56-year-old joined the Predators as president of hockey operations and GM on June 2 and made a series of moves.<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s on his first scouting trip for his new team, watching the World Junior Summer Showcase, a tournament featuring prospects from Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States.<\/p>\n
Nashville has seven prospects here, including its first draft pick under MacFarland — U.S. center Wyatt Cullen, the No. 10 pick of the 2026 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is super exciting,\u201d MacFarland said. \u201cWe all love to watch games, and to have that many guys here is exciting for me. You know these guys. You know them as players. But I certainly don\u2019t know them as well as I\u2019m going to know them within the next couple of months, and this is a good launch point for me and for our staff to watch them play in a competitive environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacFarland said it was a tough decision to leave Colorado, and he will always care about the Avalanche. He helped them win the Stanley Cup as assistant GM in 2022. They made the playoffs in each of his four seasons as GM and won the Presidents\u2019 Trophy with the NHL\u2019s best record last season.<\/p>\n
But the Predators presented an intriguing opportunity. He made the change at a busy time, with the NHL Combine, NHL Draft and free agency all coming in his first month. Among his moves: hiring Rob Blake as executive vice president of hockey operations and Jamie Langenbrunner as special assistant to the GM, and acquiring forwards Mavrik Bourque<\/a>, Ross Colton<\/a>, Jack Drury<\/a>, Adam Edstrom<\/a>, Nils Hoglander<\/a>\u00a0and Alex Kerfoot<\/a>\u00a0along with defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a whirlwind, but that\u2019s the hockey business, right?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bourque was a key addition. The 24-year-old had 41 points (20 goals, 21 assists) in 82 games last season, his second full season in the NHL. After acquiring him from the Dallas Stars in a trade on July 1, the Predators signed him to a six-year, $33 million contract ($5.5 million average annual value) on July 4.<\/p>\n Could he be a first-line center?<\/p>\n \u201cI think where he can get to will be up to him, but we feel he doesn\u2019t have to be anything other than what he\u2019s been,\u201d MacFarland said. \u201cHe was a 20-goal guy last year. If he can just come in and replicate that and be part of that younger core, that would excite us, whether that\u2019s second-line center or middle-six winger or whatever. He\u2019s going to get every opportunity to excel in the middle of the ice, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 11 seasons with the Colorado Avalanche, the last four as general manager, the 56-year-old joined the Predators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-792357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}