Wednesday's notes: What should the Predators go shopping for?

Here is my assessment of the team and their needs in order of importance:

1) A legitimate 2nd Line D man. Not sure if Josi is legit yet, but if he is, then he would be the right player to go along with the new D man that we would acquire. Personally, I think Klien should be on the 3rd line and then Blum, Hillen, and Bouillon fighting for the #6 D. Blum could grow into a better D man, but I haven’t seen it yet.

2) Once we have the D secured (which would hopefully take some of the pressure off of Pekka and reduce the SOG), then we shore up our forwards. I think we need a stud Forward who can play both center and wing. Here is why. When everyone is healthy, they you put him at LW with Fisher and either Horny/Erat. That moves Wilson down to the 2nd line LW with Smith and the other of Horny/Erat. Now you have 2 solid scoring lines. Leggy moves to center the 3rd line with Koistitsyn and either Tootoo/Geoffrion/Halischuk.Which leaves us with a shut down grinding 4th lne of Spaling, Smithson and either Tootoo or Halischuk.

The above work when everyone is healthy..Our problem is when we aren’t healthy. Especially if one of our Centers go down. Having a versitile stud LW/C that would switch lines/position as needed would give us depth we severly lack at forward.

3) If we manage to shore up our D (1) and our forwards (2), then we start shaping the depth of the future…We ask ourselves, are Bouillon, Blum, Klein, Hillen, Spaling, Halischuk, Geoffrion, and Koistitsyn going to be part of our team going forward? If the answer is no, then we look at options to trade them either for draft picks/prospects/proven NHL players. We don’t want to wait until the off season next year to find out we can’t trade them or can’t resign them and end up losing them for nothing. I wouldn’t trade all of them, but do believe that 1 or 2 of them being traded at the trade deadline would not adversely affect the chemistry of the team.

The defense uber alles mentality runs deep at OtF. :/

When we talk of a “star” forward, what is really of the most importance is “how much does this guy make”. A Bobby Ryan at 4.5M is steal if you can get him. Someone in the 6M+ range means you have to make a decision between that player and losing one of our big two Dmen (a discussion we’ve had at length many times before).

Put simply, there’s a far greater chance of Dman pairings will come together than will our offensive lines. Because of that, at the very least, a top 6 forward should be our first priority.

in that order. Yes our D has holes but it’s All World compared to most teams, especially since Suter/Weber play half the game.

I love the character of our forwards but they all play too similarly, too much dump & chase, very little creativity in creating the time and space. 2 power plays last night with no shots? C’mon!

Preds strategy is simple: Score 3 goals a night, Peks is usually good to let 2 or less and we win. Reality is we’ve got to get a Top 6 guy to get us to the 3 goal plateau nightly. If not, we’re a middle of the pack and not a serious contender.

We have the future, Trotz just wont play them together except on the Power play. Now if the line combo is good enough for the PP why the heck isn’t it good enough to be on the Ice together all the time. We have 3 points in 6 games since Legwands return (Nov 19th) to the 1st line and 8 points in the 6 games he missed…think about it. .

I know this…When the Honey Badger, Horny, Wilson line was together, we won…… Now that they are apart, we lose.

Roman Josi looks to be someone who has the ability to play 2nd line. I’m not sure we need defensive help, we need to shoot the puck to take some pressure off the defense…..maybe then we won’t need the defense to be perfect, just efficient.

Malone is a dependable 25 goal type player with size and physical presence, plus he’s not going to command a premium as high as a Bobby Ryan. He’s got a $4.5m cap hit but he actually makes $3m-2.5-2.5 over the next 3 seasons, making the tail end of his front loaded contract more palatable. This makes him a piece of the puzzle moving forward, not just this year. I owuld pay $3mil to a 25 goal scorer for sure. That being said, a solid 2nd pair defenseman is more of an immediate need. Klein and Blum have regressed in their development, and Blum isn’t going to be a shutdown player at 180lbs soaking wet. This is the exact reason I thought it was unwise to part with OBrien. He signed for $1mil for 1yr with Colorado- that’s not alot of money to bring a style of play only Weber provides. Makes me think he wasn’t the coaches’ favorite player behind the scenes. He certainly seemed undisciplined at times