Nashville Predators 2023-24 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings

By Dom Luszczyszyn, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille

Welcome to the Barry Trotz era.

The now-general manager known for his defensive acumen as a coach seems to know exactly what the Predators need — offense — and the Andrew Brunette hire is geared to bring some help in that department.

Where it gets a little cloudier is in understanding the team’s direction. While it seemed like Nashville was ready to take a step back, veteran signings like Ryan O’Reilly, Gustav Nyqvist and Luke Schenn don’t scream rebuild. So was that retooling enough to make the Predators a true playoff team? Or will Trotz get proactive during the season and kick off a long-haul process if the team struggles?

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The Predators, whether they thrive or fail, could bring some intrigue. Or it could be more of the same, with another finish in the dreaded middle that leaves them with nothing to show for the season once again.

The projection

A Predators rebuild has been long overdue for years. Their chances of actually winning a Stanley Cup have been essentially invisible for a while now, but they are always knocking at the playoff door. They didn’t make it last season, but they were shockingly close given how many trades they made in the complete opposite direction.

It’s not for a lack of try, but this team just won’t go away. Even when they’re not expected to, they linger on the playoff bubble. That’s exactly where they stand this year: on the outside of it.

The Predators don’t have the most impressive roster, but a couple of superstars plus some depth is enough to get them an 89-point projection. That’s enough for a real shot at the playoffs at 36 percent and not far off from where the team landed last year. Nashville shuffled the deck in the offseason, but the end result is a similarly talented team.

A mushy-middle finish is where Nashville likely lands this season, though it is possible new coach Andrew Brunette can push the Predators further than expected. That’s the franchise’s calling card, why stop now?

Percentiles with the bar graphs are based on each player’s Offensive, Defensive and Net Rating relative to their time-on-ice slot, i.e. the first forward is compared to other first forwards only.

The strengths

The Predators have been a frisky bubble team over the last few years and expect to be again this year. The reason for that is obvious: Roman Josi and Juuse Saros. A franchise defenseman and a franchise goalie can go a long way toward taking an otherwise weak roster into the playoff mix.

With a plus-17 Net Rating, Josi ranks third in the league among defensemen behind only Cale Makar and Adam Fox. That’s a massive impact from a single defender and it should come as no surprise that Josi brings that kind of value to the table. Offensively, there aren’t many defenders who can produce at Josi’s level and it shows in how involved he is in creating chances and in leading the rush. Josi is the king of bringing the puck up ice, earning 8.5 controlled entries per 60 last season — two more than Erik Karlsson, the next closest defenseman. Over the last two seasons, the Predators have earned 57 percent of the goals with Josi on the ice, and his relative impact on that is top five in the league. Nashville’s offense runs through Josi.

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He’s incredibly consistent and the same holds true for Saros who has had an above-average goals saved above expected through all seven seasons he’s played. Last season was a high-water mark for that where he saved 45 goals above expected, frequently bailing out a defense corps that left him hung out to dry routinely. Saros is one of only three goalies to rank top 10 in goals saved above expected in each of the last three seasons, sharing that distinction with Connor Hellebuyck and Andrei Vasilevskiy. That’s elite company, and by total goals saved during that stretch, he ranks behind only Ilya Sorokin and Igor Shesterkin. Again, elite company, and Saros enters the season projected to be the league’s second-most valuable goalie as a result.

That elite duo is projected to push Nashville 35 goals above average which would be enough to place the Predators into the top 10 … if the rest of the roster was average. Unfortunately, it is not, and the duo is probably holding Nashville back from being a true bottom-10 team instead. Despite that, there are still some other strengths worth noting aside from the two superstars.

As far as top-line forwards go, Filip Forsberg is still pretty solid — even if his production from two seasons ago ended up being a flash in the pan. He might have a bit more offensive support this year if Luke Evangelista and Thomas Novak can sustain the production they showed last season. Novak, believe it or not, was 14th in points per 60 at five-on-five last year — sandwiched between Jack Hughes and Mitch Marner. He was shockingly elite at bringing the puck up ice through all three zones and creating chances off the rush.

Cody Glass is one of Nashville’s most compelling players this season after finally making an impact at the NHL level. The 24-year-old was drafted at No. 6 in 2017 and has needed plenty of seasoning to get to this point. Still, he has potential to be a solid two-way top-six center for Nashville this season after what he showed last season. Offensively his game hasn’t translated quite yet, but his defensive impacts were surprisingly strong. The Predators allowed 0.43 fewer expected goals and 0.87 fewer actual goals with Glass on the ice last season relative to teammates.

The bottom of the forward group should be decent too, only because Philip Tomasino and Juuso Parssinen probably deserve a bigger role over some of the players above them. On defense, a trifecta of Tyson Barrie, Dante Fabbro and Luke Schenn is respectable relative to their roles. Fabbro in particular is blossoming into a pretty reliable shutdown option, leading the team in expected goals against last season.

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The weaknesses

As good as Josi and Saros are, the Predators still have a major top-end talent problem, especially up front. Josi is an excellent defenseman, but after moving Mattias Ekholm, there’s a sizable drop-off after him.

Ryan McDonagh is Nashville’s No. 2 defenseman and while he can still be a useful top-four option, top-pair minutes is pushing it. The 34-year-old’s days as a premier shutdown defender are likely coming to an end.

McDonagh earned the toughest minutes on the team last season and the Predators did outscore opponents with him on the ice. That’s the good part. The bad part is that a lot of that came via offense which is unlikely thanks to McDonagh. Defensively, his play slipped where the Predators allowed 3.1 expected goals against per 60, the worst mark of his career. That was 0.19 more than his teammates, which was also a career low.

The big change for McDonagh came in his own zone. In his final season with Tampa Bay, McDonagh could still be counted on to retrieve pucks and make a solid, safe first pass out of the zone. That wasn’t the case last year as he experienced a significant drop-off in retrievals and exits.

The same was true last season for Ryan O’Reilly, another formerly elite Ryan expected to be burdened this upcoming season with heavy usage that he’s unlikely to handle adequately. One of O’Reilly’s best qualities in 2021-22 was how involved he was in the defensive zone, specifically when it came to bringing the puck out. He was still solid in that regard last season — just not elite. His goals-against and expected goals-against rate were among the worst of his career and though he looked much better while in Toronto, that was while being surrounded by elite talent.

That won’t be the case in Nashville where O’Reilly will have to be the driver, a role he no longer looks well-suited for. While his on-ice numbers may have improved with the Leafs, they tanked in the playoffs away from William Nylander and John Tavares. As far as No. 1 forwards go, no one is expected to provide less value than O’Reilly who is closer to a fourth or fifth option at this stage of his career.

After O’Reilly and Forsberg, ice time is pretty evenly spread out across the forward group. That’s a result of having several decent players, but very few needle-movers. Still, it feels like the Predators have been notoriously sub-optimal over the last few seasons in how they dole out minutes. Colton Sissons and Yakov Trenin are good examples of that; two players used within the team’s middle six who struggle to drive play and don’t produce nearly enough for their roles. As defensive fourth-liners who eat tough zone starts, they’re perfect, but having them play 15 minutes per night seems like a misuse of ice time. With Brunette behind the bench, some capable offensive players ready to emerge and O’Reilly capable of eating some of those minutes, maybe that changes.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

Predators' big question: Will Juuse Saros have more offensive support under Andrew Brunette?

It’s hard to know how or where newcomer Gustav Nyquist fits into all of that, but he’s typically played around 18 minutes per night the last few seasons. That’s far too many for a player of his current caliber and if Nashville is expecting a top-line forward, the team is in for a rude awakening.

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Nyquist’s scoring is nothing special: He’s at 1.69 points per 60 at five-on-five the last two seasons which ranks 197th in the league. Nothing wrong with being a middle-six scorer if Nyquist could still drive play the way he used to, but he’s not the guy he once was there either. Defensively he gives a lot back, with his teams allowing over three expected and actual goals against per 60 in each of the last two seasons. Maybe he could work as a depth scorer for the Predators, but as a top-six option, he’s out of his depth at both ends of the ice.

As is usually the case for Nashville, the Predators aren’t exactly high on options that can fill the role. Maybe a young player steps up and does so. Maybe. But Nashville’s best options in that vein, Evangelista and Novak, really struggle too much without the puck to be fully trusted. As it stands now, there’s a reason Nashville doesn’t expect to be a playoff team despite having a bona fide top-five defenseman and goalie: The rest just isn’t close to good enough.

The wild card

Can Filip Forsberg bounce back to lead the Predators’ offense?

The answer to our question here depends on your personal definition of “bouncing back” and how it pertains to Forsberg specifically. If the expectation is for him to revert to his 2021-22 form and score 42 goals in 69 games, at a rate of 2.02/60 that placed him third in the NHL among players who appeared in at least eight games … well, we’ve got bad news.

Forsberg, good a player as he is and has been, was that version of himself for one season — fueled by an unsustainably hot power play that unsurprisingly fell back to earth last season. That doesn’t make it a reasonable bar for him to carry for the rest of his career. First off, though he missed 13 games, it was still the second-most he’s played in his nine full-time NHL seasons. More importantly, though, he shot 18.58 percent, a full 6.5 above his career mark up to that point and 4.1 above his previous career high. Expecting anybody — even an All-Star — to go 18.58 percent over the course of several months is unfair.

With that out of the way, though, some sort of rebound from 2022-23, when Forsberg put up 19 goals and 23 assists in 50 games, is a reasonable expectation. The model puts him at 35 goals (three ahead of his 82-game pace in ‘22-23), 76 points and a plus-9 Offensive Rating that leads Nashville by a healthy margin. He’s also likely to benefit at least a bit from having O’Reilly as his new center, and Brunette — an offense-first, transition-minded coach — behind the bench. Both of those factors could reasonably lead you to expect a bit more.

The biggest question of all is whether Forsberg can stay in the lineup. If he stays lucky there, he likely won’t need to ride a shooting-percentage bender to feel good about his results. However he produces though, Nashville is likely to need every drop.

The best case

The best case can go in two directions: A Saros-led team doesn’t just reach the playoffs but has the offensive support to go deep, or the Predators fall flat on their faces and end up with a super high draft pick that helps them land a young, franchise cornerstone.

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The worst case

Saros continues to mask the weaknesses in front of the crease and drags this team right to the middle. Management doesn’t move out pieces to push the process along with false hope of a deep playoff run. The team falls short of the postseason again and without a high pick to show for it. The Predators stay in limbo and end the year in disappointment.

The bottom line

At some point, the Predators are going to have to move backward to move forward. Agree with it or not, Trotz has been quite clear in his belief that we’re not at that point. It’s tough to blame him; long-term, pre-existing extensions for Josi and Forsberg, in some way, made the choice for him.

Beyond that, you’d think this revamped core would be tied to Saros’ current contract, which has two years remaining. “Yep,” the logic goes, “that’s when they’ll finally commit to a rebuild.” Top goaltending prospect Yaroslav Askarov is almost ready, though, and it’s easy to imagine him taking over a bit down the line. In other words, names will change. The end result may not.

References

How these projections work

Understanding projection uncertainty 

Resources

Evolving Hockey

Natural Stat Trick

Hockey Reference

NHL

All Three Zones Tracking by Corey Sznajder

Read the other 2023-24 season previews here.

(Photo of Roman Josi and Filip Forsberg: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

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