The Nashville Predators announced that they have extended qualifying offers to Calle Jarnkrok, Taylor Aronson, Petter Granberg and Stefan Elliott.
The @PredsNHL have issued qualifying offers to the following players:
Taylor Aronson
Stefan Elliott
Petter Granberg
Calle Jarnkrok— KWilsonPreds (@KWilsonPreds) June 27, 2016
The RFA’s (that haven’t signed elsewhere) left off of that list are Gabriel Bourque, Cody Hodgson and Garrett Noonan.
The biggest surprise among those three players is Bourque of course. He has been a mainstay in Nashville’s bottom-six over the past five seasons and played wherever he was asked at a serviceable level. He’s a hard skating forward that will sit somewhere around the 20-point mark each season, but only when he is healthy which is the biggest struggle of his.
Bourque was sidelined from November 27 onward in the 2015-16 season with an undisclosed injury. He also played just 34 games in the 2012-13 campaign. That certainly doesn’t help the cause and neither does the emergence of Viktor Arvidsson, Austin Watson, Colton Sissons and others in the system.
The Predators have noted that they are looking to part ways with Eric Nystrom in some fashion, so not extended an offer to Bourque is a bit surprising but he is a player that is replaceable in the lineup.
Most of us We will miss you, Mr. Bourque: