A Hater’s Preview of the 2025-26 Nashville Predators | NHL Season Preview

A Hater’s Preview of the 2025-26 Nashville Predators | NHL Season Preview

The Nashville Predators are the NHL’s equivalent of a military quagmire. Unfortunately for fans of Smashville, there is still no exit strategy. After a very disappointing last season, is there any hope going forward for the PRs or are they still years away from being competitive once again? Forget me for you should forget it. You’re living in the past, man. The 20242 Nashville Predators entered the season with high expectations after going out and spending a bunch in free agency in Barry Trotz’s first off season as GM. Adding players like Steven Stamos, Brady Shay, Jonathan Marsheso among others bolster an already very solid core of guys like Roman Yosi, Jussi Sorrowos, and Philip Forsber. It was looking like Nashville was incredibly stacked going into the season. And many, myself among them, thought that they would be one of the contenders for the Stanley Cup. What followed was nothing short of a Greek tragedy. Everything went wrong for the Natural Predators last year. From bad chemistry to a lack of depth to just plain old regression from some of their cornerstone pieces. Predators went from being Stanley Cup hopefuls to finishing as one of the worst teams in the entire NHL. And worse yet, they didn’t really have a path going forward as well. And I mentioned this in my breakdown of how to fix the Nashville Predators, but they were locked into some very big, very tough to move contracts on some high-end veterans that were going to be and have still proven to be almost impossible to get out of. Despite promises from Barry Trots that there would be big moves to overhaul the team if they didn’t write the ship, the season dragged on and on and no big moves were to be made. The coaching staff remained in place. None of the big trade ships were moved at the deadline and the end of the natural predator season was just a long drawn out floodletting as the team just simply withered and died. Don’t turn your back on me. Let’s get one thing straight. This is shooters tour. I’ve worked hard my whole life, paid my dues, and now it’s shooters turn. But surely they’ve made big changes this offseason and gotten a lot better, right? Well, unfortunately for the team that scored the second fewest goals in the NHL last season, that’s not the case up front. The Nashville Predators just brought back all of those big additions from the previous offseason along with their core who have just gotten older. Philip Forsber is still here and probably their best forward, but he’s now on the wrong side of 30. And he’s going to be joined on the first line by Steven Stamos, a guy who has completely lost his fastball, beginning to draw whispers of being a Cooerov merchant along with Jonathan Marsheso, who the Nashville Predators not so secretly tried to get rid of all offseason but just couldn’t find a suitor for. While that’s a respectable first line, the second line is where the lack of depth really begins to shine. You have Michael Bunting, the big addition from last season from another alien organization in the Pittsburgh Penguins, paired with another one of their big acquisitions in Ryan O’Reilly, a solid contributor and character guy to be sure, but he is still in his mid30s. The last spot of the top six is where they have their depth of 23-year-old Luca Vangalista, who is just on the cusp of breaking out and becoming a legitimate fan forward for the Nashville Predators. This is what their fans have been saying for the last 3 years. The third line though, that’s where things start to get really ugly. You got 29-year-old Cole Smith, who is just career AHL cosplaying as a third liner. Eric Kala, whose team is probably worth a lot more than his actual productivity, and Michael McCarron, a bruising tough guy who should be playing like 5 minutes on your fourth line. On the fourth line, you have the only other bastions of youth on the National Predators Forward Corps and Zachary Laru or Svetkov and Matthew Wood. all of whom are in their early 20s but are looking like their developmental ceiling is bottom six role player. If this team has any balls that’ll bump down some of those overpaid veterans to make room for guys like Eigor Surin Brady Martin, Kdy Stigga andor Riker Lee to get some quality time to develop in the NHL this season. All we hear is about that defense. They can’t stop a nose bleed. Now, while Nashville’s group of fours beyond the first line is just an absolute mess, their defensive core does have a lot of talent. Obviously, it’s headlined by captain Roman Yosi, who is still an effective player, although he’s now 35. And we’re starting to have the conversation of whether he should get moved off of another team to have a chance to win a Stanley Cup somewhere. He’ll share top pairing duties with Nick Blankenberg, a 27-year-old who has barely played 100 games in his NHL career. So, yeah, pray that Yosi discovered the Fountain Youth this offseason. On the second pairing, we have one of their big offseason acquisitions from last year and Brady Sheay, who is probably as good or slightly better than Roman Yosi at this stage in their careers. But the problem is he’s only two years into a seven-year contract that was handed out last year, which is going to age like yogurt in the desert. He’ll be paired up with Justin Baron, a former refugee of the Montreal Canadians, who is now swimming back to Canada like he’s trying to escape Castro’s regime. Bottom pairing features their one big acquisition this off season in Pervix, who is a very serviceable defenseman from the Tampa Bay Lightning, who foolishly misinterpreted Steven Simos’s message of God, I want to play with you again. And they added another guy who knows something about winning, a youngish Nick Hey from the Vegas Golden Knights. You enjoyed all that winning and having fun over in Vegas, Nick. Wait, it’s not Goldberg. It’s us here. Take it. It’s the goalie. The number one goalie in Nashville will be Jussi Soros once again, who picked last year to be a great time to have one of his worst statistical seasons ever right after signing a massive extension. Luckily, he’s only just turned 30, so it’s not as though Nashville expected his productivity to drop off a cliff. But looking at the team around him, they need him to be Superman this year if they want to have any shot of being competitive. And even at Soros’s best, that is a tall ask. His backup is Justice Aninan, owner of one of the best names in the NHL and a generally below average backup. Though, no rest for the weary, you see, you’re getting another 60 to 65 starts again this year, bud. You ain’t going to be able to hit them. They’re too good. And you suck something off. Yes, sir. I sure do. Hey, look everybody. It’s Andrew Brunette, Schroinger’s coach. Guy is simultaneously a great coach leading the Florida Panthers to their first President’s Trophy in franchise history and also a terrible coach for getting fired there and ending up in Nashville where he took a team with all the talent in the world and ran them into the ground. Which one is he? Given that Paul Maurice took over for Brunette and immediately turned the Florida Panthers into a two-time Stanley Cup champion, I’m going to guess that it’s probably the latter. Despite that disaster of a season last year, Bernette somehow escaped the firing squad and is returning for a second season behind the bench in Smashville. dude perpetually looks like the dad who’s lost in the middle of the mall. So, I don’t have high expectations that he’s going to be able to turn this ship around for Nashville this year. Since you’re new here, uh, I’m going to cut you a break. Nashville needed a full gut job this off season, and instead they just hung some new chandeliers. I don’t dislike the logic of adding guys like Pervix and Heg to the defensive court. Makes them a little bit more well-rounded, but this team could not score to save their lives last year, and they’ve basically added no offensive assets. Their only hope really, like I mentioned, is that some of the younger guys that they have like Steiga, Lee, Evangelista, Laroo, and or Surin take massive steps forward and become quality offensive contributors. Nashville did have the opportunity to add a high-end contributor in the NHL draft, but unfortunately for them, the ping-pong balls fell in the opposite way. Despite having the third worst record last year, they ended up with the number five pick, thus missing out on some of the high-end forward prospects. ended up taking Brady Martin at pick number five which is a solid selection although I would have preferred that they take a guy like Hagens or Martone who were still on the board at that point did take another forward later in the first round and Riker Lee and they got some young defenseman both in the first round at pick 21 with Cameron Reed and early in the second round with Jacob Romach. They also added a possible goalender of the future in Jackavakovic in the second round as well. So overall, Nashville did most of their work this off season in the draft, which is a smart thing for them to do, but man, do I think they passed over some very good prospects there. Pretty good. Pretty damn good, lads. In case it wasn’t evident from earlier, Roman Yosi is one of my favorite defensemen of this era, and it is a damn shame that the twilight of his career is going to be spent on a middling Nashville Predators team. I really hope that eventually they will move him to a team that will give him a chance to win a Stanley Cup because at his best he was one of the five best defenseman in the NHL. He’s obviously not that anymore, but he is still a very capable top pairing guy. He’s an incredible leader and I just hope that he’s going to get the chance to be a part of one more deep playoff run, even if that’s not likely to be in Nashville. I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be gray. and it’s going to last you for the rest of your life. Last year, I thought that the Nashville Predators were going to be the bee’s knees, one of the best teams in the West, challenging teams like the Oilers, Golden Knights, and Stars. This year, I’ve learned my lesson. It’s very obvious that the Nashville Predators just do not have the depth, consistently good team, and their high-end talent, while enticing, just isn’t good enough to carry the rest of this very paper thin roster. would surprise me if Nashville finishes outside of the bottom five in the NHL this year. And it would surprise me even more if Andrew Bernett returns after another disappointing season in Smashville. I think it’s very likely that some of the veterans that Barry Trotz added last off seasonason, guys like Marshaso, Stamco are going to get traded at the deadline and you could even see some of the core guys potentially getting shopped. I mentioned Roman Yosi, but Ryan O’Reilly only has one more year left on his deal after this season. He could be a candidate to get shopped. Who knows? If things get that desperate, could they entertain trading guys like Forsber or Sorrowos or Shay? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But going to be pretty bad in Nashville this season as the Predators become the prey. [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [Music] Hey, [Music]

The 2025-26 Nashville Predators are a team stuck in a quagmire. Is there any hope of this team getting out of the mud?

Follow me on other socials

Twitter: https://x.com/R1nkR4t
TikTok: @the.rink.rat

Business Inquiries: the.r1nkr4t@gmail.com

#nhl #hockey #2024nhl