This was a unique opportunity for the Nashville Predators. They never draft this high.
Fifth!
Prime position to finally be able to snag that excessively talented, lightning quick, sensationally flashy, goal-scoring, game-changing blur of a center that this franchise has lacked.
But if they did that, they wouldn’t be the Nashville Predators, would they?
Nah, give this franchise a hard-working tough guy. Someone known for physical play and a competitive mindset. Someone who grew up on a farm, no less, and didn’t even attend the draft with other top prospects, tending to animals instead.
These Predators do have a type.
And center Brady Martin fit it too perfectly for general manager Barry Trotz to resist selecting him over a couple of other gifted and tantalizing forwards who would’ve made a whole lot of sense — for some other team.
“I loved this kid when we met him in the combine,” Trotz said of Martin. ” . . . It came down to a little bit of an ‘it’ factor. The guy shows up. All those intangibles — work ethic — all those things, I mean, there’s not too many things that are going to get in this guy’s way.”
Martin could end up being a top-line center and 40-goals-a-year superstar in the NHL, but that’s not how the hockey cognoscenti were projecting this pick when the Predators passed on winger Porter Martone and center James Hagens to take Martin.
Immediately afterward, Martone went sixth to the Philadelphia Flyers, and Hagens went seventh to the Boston Bruins.
Evaluations of Martin’s game, meanwhile, were entertaining in their own way. USA TODAY used words like “super intense” and “take-no-prisoners.” From the sounds of it, the Predators chose violence in a player who you’ll know is on the ice because he’ll routinely rattle boards at Bridgestone Arena with bruising hits. That, for the most part, has been missing since Tanner Jeannot was traded.
I miss Jeannot. Dude was fun to watch.
But Jeannot was an undrafted free agent, certainly not a No. 5 overall pick. A fair question is going to be whether the offensive ceiling for the Predators’ new center proves worthy of that spot.
The Athletic, based on a consensus of analysts’ opinions, listed Martin as the eighth overall prospect entering this draft, which isn’t bad. But it was behind Martone (third) and Hagens (tied for fifth).
After Martin was drafted, Corey Pronman of The Athletic was disparaging in his analysis, giving the Predators a C-plus grade and saying Martin, while “extremely physical,” was more a “middle of the lineup player” and on the “bubble” to be near the top of a lineup. As opposed to, say, Martone, who was a “bubble NHL star and top of the lineup,” and Hagens, a surefire “top of the lineup player.”
“I wouldn’t call him a dynamic offensive player,” Pronman wrote of Martin. “ . . . I just don’t love this profile at 5, especially with players like Porter Martone or James Hagens on the board.”
If Martone and/or Hagens goes on to superstardom in the NHL, which is quite possible for both, this pick could haunt Trotz and the Predators like no other.
Because again, the Predators usually don’t have an opportunity to pick this high.
Martin was their highest pick since Seth Jones was drafted No. 4 overall way back in 2013. In the 11 drafts since, Nashville never even had a top-10 selection.
And guess what? It has struggled to find a younger generation of players who could keep the franchise’s trajectory from sinking.
The terrible 2024-25 season gave way to this draft offering — a pick high enough to offer hope for meaningful change. For the Predators’ fortunes, maybe it will turn out that way.
That No. 5 pick, though? An old-school Predators pick, if there ever was one.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social