LOS ANGELES — Steven Stamkos emphatically let it be known that he had no interest in being traded from the Nashville Predators. And when general Barry Trotz subtracted from the roster at the March 6 deadline, Stamkos, one of the game’s greatest goal-scorers, was not pleased.
There is a rational way of looking at a situation, as opposed to an emotional one. And when the deadline arrived, the Predators were outside a playoff spot in the Western Conference. Adding a player for the short term wasn’t the logical play. So Nashville moved on from forwards Michael Bunting, Michael McCarron and Cole Smith, and defenseman Nick Blankenburg.
“As players, you don’t have control of what happens at the deadline,” Stamkos said. “Obviously, we traded away some players that were big parts of this organization and everyday NHL players. Guys that have been around for a while. It hurts when you’re not in a position to add guys, right? You never want to get rid of guys. That usually means that things aren’t going well.
“We were hovering around four or five points out. All it did was just give guys some internal motivation maybe to just keep playing.”
Perhaps incredibly, a month after the deadline, they’ve still got something to play for.
With their victory over San Jose on Saturday night, the Predators moved back into the second wild-card spot in the West, by virtue of a tiebreaker over Los Angeles. Even though their playoff prospects have been on life support for months, the Predators are still kicking.
A 6-12-4 start to the season put Nashville on a catch-up treadmill. They slowly improved and then, 11 days after a trade deadline that should have signified the end, they started a five-game win streak to climb into a playoff spot. Now they’re battling the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks — and perhaps the Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues — for a postseason spot.
Asked how often his team has been written off this season, Predators coach Andrew Brunette smiled and cracked, “All the time.”
“We stuck with it and I think with that’s kind of given us the extra motivation,” he continued. “The defiance and the chip on your shoulder that we’re out to prove people wrong and there’s a lot of pride in that. A lot of those guys are very decorated, have been through a lot of big games, big seasons, and their leadership skills have come up.”
Chief among those leaders is the 36-year-old Stamkos, who is nearing the eighth 40-goal season of his career. Thirty-four of his 38 goals have come in the last 54 games. Ryan O’Reilly’s wish to remain in Nashville has been honored, even though he does not have a no-trade clause. O’Reilly, 35, has given the Predators a bounce-back year with 25 goals and 69 points. Filip Forsberg, the youngster of that trio at 31, remains their consistent offensive leader with 37 goals and 71 points.
Better goaltending from Juuse Saros has helped. But the Predators are also getting help from younger players. Fourth-year forward Luke Evangelista, 24, has a career-high 51 points. Rookie center Matthew Wood, a 21-year-old who was their first-round pick in 2023, is among the NHL’s top first-year goal-scorers with 16. And with forwards Joakim Kemell, Zachary L’Heureux, Fedor Svechkov and Reid Schaefer, and defenseman Ryan Ufko, the Preds have had an infusion of contributions from their AHL club.
An air of disappointment has hung around the club since the massive 2024 free-agent splash that brought in Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei to join Forsberg, O’Reilly and captain Roman Josi. What resulted was a massive blunder in 2024-25, a 30-44-8 record that left them nowhere near the playoffs.
Instead of shifting direction or cutting Brunette loose, Trotz stuck with the plan. Brunette said that following last season, he wanted his veterans to know they needed to take the lead in cultivating young players, per the directive of the organization. “We were going to have to have buy-in, which we didn’t have all last year,” Brunette said.
“We collaborated together,” the coach continued. “We had to make some changes. They had ownership to it and then coming into the year when we went through some stuff, they stuck together and they grabbed it. You can look at Stammer after November. Roman. They all seem to elevate their game and kept us in the fight all the way through. They saw a little bit of the rewards that some of our young kids were coming. They’re contributing.”
Added O’Reilly: “It was pretty dark there earlier in the year. It was very disappointing. You know, it wasn’t the start we wanted. Yeah, we dug ourselves a big hole and I think there was maybe a lot of doubt. I know for myself there was some doubt that, hey, are we going to get back into this? And it was very frustrating. Credit to this group and coaching staff that we kept fighting. We didn’t quit. We kept battling back and we ended up finding a little momentum and crawled back into this race.”
But even as they crawled, Trotz sold. Blankenburg, Bunting, McCarron and Smith all got traded during deadline week. While the moves created opportunities for more youngsters, they weren’t easy to digest in the dressing room.
“It was very disappointing to see some guys that have been with us from the beginning that were helping us, but I think we could have went two ways with it,” O’Reilly said. “We could have just shut down and everyone got on their own page, but we came closer from it. We realized that we each have to do more. … It’s a business and sometimes business decisions happen. It can be frustrating. But it kind of unified us. Hey, they might not think we’re in the mix, but it matters what we think and what we believe in. And we have something to prove, that we are good enough to be here.”
The irony is that Trotz, who has announced he will retire at the end of this season, also fortified their asset cache, and the Predators now have multiple picks in the second, third, fourth and fifth rounds — in addition to their own first-rounder — this year, plus four third-round selections in 2027 and two picks in the 2028 second and third rounds.
But that’s not on the minds of players during a playoff push. “No professional athlete is going to say we don’t want to win so we get a higher draft pick,” Stamkos said.
“That’s just not in guys’ DNA,” he continued. “We want to give ourselves a chance to be in the playoffs. That’s the most fun hockey you’re going to play. You’re not thinking about the future as a player. That’s management’s job, right? Obviously sometimes you don’t see eye-to-eye with that because you’re in the race, right? You’re in the fight, you’re in the battle, you want to win. And that’s all we’ve done. Just had that mentality that we want to go out and try to play meaningful games at this time of the year, which we didn’t last year.”
The deadline galvanized those who remained. Perhaps it made them defiant to the widespread suggestion that the Predators should shift into a rebuild. But in late February, Stamkos said there was “zero” chance that he would waive his full no-movement clause to facilitate a trade. And while O’Reilly doesn’t have trade protection, the Preds have essentially said they would run any scenarios through him.
But the Nashville market is attractive to NHL players and their families. And their high-performing veterans didn’t want to abandon a playoff push for a more certain path toward the postseason. Stamkos said he didn’t intend to send a message to teammates with his zero-chance stance. But the effect was felt.
“It wasn’t always easy,” Burnette said. “We all hung in there together. We all stayed in the boat and paddled a little harder and got out of the rough waters.”
“I think if you asked anyone in here, no one really wanted to get traded,” Stamkos said. “Even the guys that did. We have a great group of guys here, and obviously we’ve probably underachieved a little bit in terms of expectations of last year and the start we got off to this year. But it’s a great place to play in Nashville. We have an unbelievable group of guys and no one wants to leave that. You want to be part of that group. You want to feel like you’ve contributed to the success of something.
“I think if you ask any guys that were in the room or even the guys that got traded, they wanted to stay and be part of this. You want to see it through and, like I said, you want to be a part of the solution. That’s the mindset we’ve had.”