Friedman: Nashville's not too interested in taking steps backwards

[Bourne Endeavor]

Pittsburgh may be the only team mostly embracing a rebuild, but Nashville seems determined to fall ass backwards into one while trying to be "competitive".

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

They should either be going all in around Stamkos, Machessault, O'Reilly, Foresberg, Josi, Skjei, and Saros right now...Or start selling them off and retooling/rebuilding.

There is a very wide "middle ground" between GOING ALL-IN and REBUILDING.

Trotz has not shown much managerial acumen thus far, but even he is not dumb enough to think he's in any position to GO ALL IN right now. He'll tweak a bit, per the Haula trade, hopefully also bolstering RD in particular, cross his fingers that the team magically gels next year under a reformed Brunette, and hope to squeeze into a wildcard spot. It probably won't work. But that'll be the extent of his hope.

And if/when things don't go as well as he's hoping, he'll have some assets to sell off at the TDL. Not the big name guys signed long-term with NMCs. Just the Bunting, Sissons, Haula types. And he'll rinse and repeat for 2026-27. And there could be a coaching change along the way at some point, which would probably go a long way towards helping the team improve.

In fact, I expect Trotz will just be in a perpetual "rinse and repeat" cycle along these lines, right up until they fire him. He wants his team to win hockey games NOW. He just doesn't seem to have a very good grasp on how to make that happen.

 

[Kimota]

Seems like Trotz did not learn anything from his stay at Long Island. lol Never hire a coach as GM.

 

[LokiDog]

Nashville signs Gavrikov, Tavares on July 1st.

 

[periferal]

Beyond amazing that the best coach of the last 20 years is turning into one of the worst GMs in the past 20 years.

Although I guess after seeing Gretzky as a head coach anything is possible.

 

[Jannik Hansen]

Pretty rich to see all the posters making fun of Trotz off-season last year when his moves were universally approved at the time and had the Preds near the top of most of their divisional rankings to start the year.

This is revisionist history. The only universal truth is that they spent a lot of money. There were plenty of people that criticized them for adding a bunch of overpriced vets.

 

[Armourboy]

This is revisionist history. The only universal truth is that they spent a lot of money. There were plenty of people that criticized them for adding a bunch of overpriced vets.

Doesn't change the fact that across the board there were far more people picking the Preds to do well than do poorly.

I was one of the few Nashville fans telling everyone to pump the brakes, so I clearly remember being tagged as a pessimist around here. The media were all predicting Nashville as a contender in the Central.

 

[biturbo19]

I think what the Preds did last year pretty much set them up to be locked into this course...for better or worse. If it's better, i guess that's nice. More likely, it's worse...but there's not a lot they can do about it. And they'll end up with a high draft pick as a result.


The assets of real meaningful value that the Preds even have to "sell off" at this point for a "rebuild", is a pretty short list. They're stuck with icky contracts on older players, and then just an awful lot of filler that isn't worth anything that moves the needle on a rebuild anyway. A sell off would basically just be...convincing Forsberg to leave a place he doesn't want to leave, maybe moving Josi even though he's now got some weird medical red flags that'd hurt his value at least as much as Eichel to Vegas, and i guess teams would take Saaros. ROR i suppose just on name value alone carries some weight. But other than that, it's really just trying to unload bad old player contracts or shipping Bottom-6 guys for mid picks and prospects.