How BAD Decisions Derailed This NHL Franchise

How BAD Decisions Derailed This NHL Franchise

This is Steven Stamos and his start in Nashville hasn’t exactly gone as planned. The Nashville Predators fell victim to one of the biggest mistakes a team can make, misusing free agency. At its best, it’s a resourceful time of year to make strategic moves, filling out your roster with additional pieces that can benefit your already established core. At its worst, well, it’s the 2024 Predators. Following a season blooming with potential, Nashville attempted to build off of their success, swinging big in free agency and acquiring some of the top names on the market. These decisions not only destroyed the team’s season, but is potentially going to set them back years as they now try to navigate this period of mediocrity that has fallen on the franchise. So today, let’s break down what went wrong for the Nashville Predators, their fall from grace, and whether or not you should believe in this core of players or be allin on the Gavin McKenna sweep stakes. from Cinderella story all the way to a lottery team. It’s definitely been a roller coaster of a past couple years for the Nashville Predators and their fan base. But what’s up guys? Welcome back to the channel. Today we have another deep dive into an NHL franchise for the off season with today’s topic being the Nashville Predators. Now, just to be upfront with you guys, there’s going to be a bit of a different styled approach to the editing on this video. When I first decided to cover this team and make this the next video, I was pretty excited. I thought it was going to be very entertaining and I would be able to find all this great coverage of the team. But then I kind of realized that there just isn’t really all that much for the Nashville Predators. Meaning that there’s not a lot of B-roll or footage that I can use to edit over my conversations that I typically have. But that doesn’t really matter. It just basically means that if you’re used to a particular style on this channel that you’re going to get a different approach today, meaning you’re going to see my ugly mug a lot more as we go throughout today’s video. So, if you enjoyed this one, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe now. But with all that being said, let’s just get right into it. And I actually want to take you guys all the way back to the 2023 off season to get this one started. After missing the playoffs in the 2022 23 season, the Nashville Predators decided to change their course a bit, trading away Ryan Johansson and also buying out Matt Duchain, who had been a fan favorite for quite some time. Of course, they had to replace that scoring though, so they brought in Ryan O’Reilly to be their topline center, as well as Gustav Nyfist to give them a bit more depth scoring. And while seen as a downgrade at the time, a lot of people were surprised by the amount of production they got out of these two guys. Yes, the season for the 2023 24 campaign did start off a bit rocky, but it turned around at the halfway mark with the PRs going on an 18game point streak, otherwise known as the U2 tour and getting themselves back into the playoffs as a wildcard team and with that a trip to Vancouver. The series was a grind for Nashville. Tight checking, low scoring, and really came down to the margins. But despite multiple goalending injuries for Vancouver, they still came out on top with Nashville not being able to solve Archur Sheil’s play and their offense truly just drying up at the worst possible moments. Particularly their power play, which was abysmal the whole series. This ended a season that was filled with promise and a lot of surprise, but at the same time did restore some optimism in the core that Nashville had built as they continued through this transition for the franchise. Off season 2024, the Nashville Predators looking to build off a surprising second half to their year decided to dip into free agency in order to take this thing to the next level. Now, I have made a video recently recapping the whole Tampa and Stampco situation. So, if you guys want to check that out after this one, I’ll have a video for you in the top right corner here. But essentially, it came down to money. Tampa was up against the cap and was willing to offer Stamco’s term at a lower AAV, but that just wasn’t enough to keep him around. And eventually, he decided to walk in free agency, signing with the Nashville Predators to a $48 million deal worth $32 million total. But that wasn’t the only signing that the Nashville Predators made. They would also bring in former Cons winner Jonathan Marcho to a 5×5.5 million contract worth 27.5 million total. and defenseman Brady Sheay to a 7 by49 million contract with an AAV of7 million on his own deal. Nashville was hands down the best team of free agency that year and based on how well they played the year prior and not losing any significant players, it felt like they were ready to take a step forward in a wildly competitive central division. But in the end, some of these changes were just too much. And the term chemistry cannot be understated enough when it comes to this team. This next part I did a bit of research on and I really want to talk about it. So, usually I’ll throw some cool B-roll for you guys to watch as I go through the numbers instead of just reading off a screen. But like I said, there’s just not a lot of B-roll to use. So, unless I just want to throw some random goals on the screen, I kind of just have to leave my mug on the screen again. So, that’s what we’re going to do. So, just bear with me. I’ll throw a few graphics on the screen for you. Uh, starting with their even strength play. This is what I think is the biggest issue when it comes to the Nashville Predators. They just don’t have enough talent to produce during 5v5 play. Bringing in Stamos and Marcho was a nice like addition to the team, but these two guys are better known for their power play numbers, not necessarily their five on five numbers. The Nashville Predators went from being 17th in the league last year with even strength goals all the way to the very worst this year. That’s too big of a drop off for a team that paid so much money in free agency. In addition to their five-on-ive offense, their even strength defense fell off as well. Last year, they allowed the eighth fewest goals, and this year they were tied for sixth most. You’re never going to win hockey games if you can’t figure out your five-on-ive play, and that was a big problem for the Predators all year long. The second thing that brutally hurt the Nashville Predators was their road performance. This team just could not win if they weren’t in their own barn. And that ended up being a massive Achilles heel for them as they would continuously fall short when going on the road and players just did not know how to produce. And I think if you don’t have a good road record in this league, it’s always going to lead to your demise. It’s a small thing to talk about, but a very important statistic when we talk about teams and how they perform throughout the year. So yes, you can win in your own barn. That’s awesome. But real teams, real contenders, they win on the road as well. And I would be remiss to not talk about this next thing. It’s just the overall lack of production from all of their players. Whether that’s familiar or new faces, not a single person had a career year or even close to that with the Preds this year. Steven Stamco went from having 40 goals and 41 assists with 81 points in 79 games played with Tampa last year to having 27 goals, 26 assists with 53 points in 82 games played with Nashville this year. Same can be said for Jonathan Marcho. He went from having 42 goals and 27 assists for 69 points in 82 games played last year with Vegas to now only having 21 goals with 35 assists for 56 points in 78 games played with Nashville. Philip Forsber went from having 48 goals with 46 assists for 94 points in 82 games played last year to dropping off a bit with 31 goals, 45 assists, and 76 points in 82 games played this year. And Roman Yosi, while dealing with a ton of injuries, did miss some time, also saw a bit of regression, going from 23 goals with 62 assists and 85 points in 82 games played in a Norris level season to dropping off to nine goals, 29 assists, 38 points in 53 games played. And we also have to talk about Sorrowos, who had a very unproductive year for the first time in his career, being below a 900 save percentage. something that I expect to turn around, but not a sustainable thing for a guy who just signed a massive new contract. The negatives just compiled up all year long for the PRs. Their players just couldn’t produce. They couldn’t figure out their power play even though they brought in power play specialists. Their five on five play suffered because the new guys that they brought in who were receiving significant minutes just couldn’t figure things out. And with that, you just saw a team that went from being exciting and surprising to abysmal and just overall boring. But with all these negatives, there’s always a few positives to take away and some things that you can look forward to with the Nashville Predators. So, let’s talk about that for a moment. The first thing is draft capital. Naturally, when you’re a bad team, you got to look at your team and kind of restock the cupboard. And I think Nashville’s done an okay job at this. They have some nice prospects and some young players who could maybe rise up and take on some of these open areas to fill in and help out this team, especially during even strength play. But when looking at this team’s center depth and kind of just their overall roster, I’m very unimpressed with that. I like Michael Bunting maybe having a full season with the team and I like them bringing in Eric Hower, even though it doesn’t make all that much sense. I do think they needed to bring in someone. So, I like that they tried something, but overall, they got to figure out who’s going to play second line center. They also got to figure out some of their depth roles, and I think that that’s going to be their biggest issue moving forward, but prospects could help out with that. They had an okay 2025 draft, and they also have compiled some picks for the future. So, focus more on that rather than winning now. But maybe some of these prospects that they could bring up could be a positive sign for the team. Next thing is just a lot of hope. You got to hope that this team can figure it out and that some of these players aren’t naturally regressing, but maybe just had an off season. Stamos in March or so will now have a full year with the PRs and maybe they can bounce back and be a bit better. Particularly Stamco who you’re paying 8 million to for just around 50 points. That’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. You can bounce back from that. Also, just mentioning like Forsber had a bit of a down year, 20 points less than the year prior. Those numbers could go up as well as Roman Yosi being injured. I think that these are things to pay attention to. Also, I just think Sorrowos is way too good to be a goalie that puts up below a 900 save percentage. I expect him to be a lot better. This guy’s in his prime and one of the best goalies in the world. So, keep an eye on him. If that defense can play a bit better with Roman Yosi back into the lineup, I think that all of those things should be fixed with that. The bottom line, the pres, they can’t be much worse than they were last year. So, there’s really nowhere to go but up. Yeah, I guess they could go down a little bit more, but I still don’t think that they’re one of the worst teams in the league. I think they’ll be middle of the pack this upcoming season with a lot of their players getting back to form. They’re going to fix some of their five on- five play and power play stuff. And I I expect them to be at least a little bit more representable with some of the players that they have. But yeah, thank you guys for watching through this video. I know it’s a little bit different from what you’re used to seeing on this channel, but I’ll be back to some of those more u in-depth edits as I find some other teams who have some more footage for me to use throughout. But just let me know what you guys think in general about this one. Do you like the Nashville Predators moving forward? Do you think that they’re still a bottom 10 team in the league? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Now, real quick, I just want to give you guys a few housekeeping things for the month of August. This is going to be a busy month for me because I’m getting married. Yeah, the end of the month I’m going to be getting married to uh my best friend. And to me, this is uh going to be a time that I’m going to use as a bit of a vacation. It’s been such a wild year going through the season and now having a lot of fun this off season breaking down teams, but I’m going to try to just reset and enjoy this very important time of my life. So, the week of I think it’s August 22nd forward, so the week after that, there may only be one YouTube video posted or maybe none at all. So, if you guys don’t see me posting, it’s not because I’ve ditched you or anything like that. It’s just that I’m going to be on my honeymoon with uh my beautiful fiance as of now. So, uh yeah, that’s all I got to say for that. But thanks again, guys, for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. I also have a few other pieces of content for you guys to check out here on the screen. So, be sure to do that after this one. Again, thank you guys for all of the support. I’ll see you in the next upload.

Today let’s delve into why spending money in Free Agency can be a very polarizing thing, and what better example is there than the Nashville Predators. Nashville after being the most surprising playoff team just a year ago completely fell off after spending the most money in free agency, dropping them from middle of the pack to lottery team. But how did this all happen, and what exactly went wrong? Well today let’s talk about the Nashville Predators and why they are the prime example of what not to do in free agency. Subscribe to Jimmy Hockey for more NHL News and Breakdowns.

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