LOS ANGELES \u2014 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\u2019s greatest goal-scorers, was not pleased.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t the logical play. So Nashville moved on from forwards Michael Bunting, Michael McCarron and Cole Smith, and defenseman Nick Blankenburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs players, you don\u2019t have control of what happens at the deadline,\u201d Stamkos said. \u201cObviously, 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\u2019re not in a position to add guys, right? You never want to get rid of guys. That usually means that things aren\u2019t going well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were hovering around four or five points out. All it did was just give guys some internal motivation maybe to just keep playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps incredibly, a month after the deadline, they\u2019ve still got something to play for.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re battling the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks \u2014 and perhaps the Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues \u2014 for a postseason spot.<\/p>\n
Asked how often his team has been written off this season, Predators coach Andrew Brunette smiled and cracked, \u201cAll the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stuck with it and I think with that\u2019s kind of given us the extra motivation,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe defiance and the chip on your shoulder that we\u2019re out to prove people wrong and there\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019Reilly\u2019s wish to remain in Nashville has been honored, even though he does not have a no-trade clause. O\u2019Reilly, 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s top first-year goal-scorers with 16. And with forwards Joakim Kemell, Zachary L\u2019Heureux, Fedor Svechkov and Reid Schaefer, and defenseman Ryan Ufko, the Preds have had an infusion of contributions from their AHL club.<\/p>\n
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\u2019Reilly 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cWe were going to have to have buy-in, which we didn\u2019t have all last year,\u201d Brunette said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe collaborated together,\u201d the coach continued. \u201cWe 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\u2019re contributing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added O\u2019Reilly: \u201cIt was pretty dark there earlier in the year. It was very disappointing. You know, it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t quit. We kept battling back and we ended up finding a little momentum and crawled back into this race.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t easy to digest in the dressing room.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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,\u201d O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cWe 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. \u2026\u00a0It\u2019s a business and sometimes business decisions happen. It can be frustrating. But it kind of unified us. Hey, they might not think we\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 in addition to their own first-rounder \u2014 this year, plus four third-round selections in 2027 and two picks in the 2028 second and third rounds.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not on the minds of players during a playoff push. \u201cNo professional athlete is going to say we don\u2019t want to win so we get a higher draft pick,\u201d Stamkos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just not in guys\u2019 DNA,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe want to give ourselves a chance to be in the playoffs. That\u2019s the most fun hockey you\u2019re going to play. You\u2019re not thinking about the future as a player. That\u2019s management\u2019s job, right? Obviously sometimes you don\u2019t see eye-to-eye with that because you\u2019re in the race, right? You\u2019re in the fight, you\u2019re in the battle, you want to win. And that\u2019s all we\u2019ve 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\u2019t last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201czero\u201d chance that he would waive his full no-movement clause to facilitate a trade. And while O\u2019Reilly doesn\u2019t have trade protection, the Preds have essentially said they would run any scenarios through him.<\/p>\n
But the Nashville market is attractive to NHL players and their families. And their high-performing veterans didn\u2019t want to abandon a playoff push for a more certain path toward the postseason. Stamkos said he didn\u2019t intend to send a message to teammates with his zero-chance stance. But the effect was felt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t always easy,\u201d Burnette said. \u201cWe all hung in there together. We all stayed in the boat and paddled a little harder and got out of the rough waters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you asked anyone in here, no one really wanted to get traded,\u201d Stamkos said. \u201cEven the guys that did. We have a great group of guys here, and obviously we\u2019ve probably underachieved a little bit in terms of expectations of last year and the start we got off to this year. But it\u2019s 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\u2019ve contributed to the success of something.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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\u2019s the mindset we\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Steven Stamkos emphatically let it be known that he had no interest in being traded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2328,2304,4,2305,2303,22387,2093],"class_list":{"0":"post-667221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","10":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-mlb-playoffs","13":"tag-mlb-postseason","14":"tag-nashville-predators","15":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116360254906101485","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}