The Nashville Predators are going to be a team to watch moving forward. That’s what most people around the hockey world gained from the introductory press conference and subsequent individual interviews with incoming general manager Barry Trotz and new head coach Andrew Brunette. Speed and puck possession are the names of the game in today’s NHL, and that’s what is going to be emphasized not only in the system on the ice but in the kind of players that are brought in.
Trotz arguably had the quote of the day, saying with confidence that he can find the Predators’ third and fourth-line players. However, it’s up to the scouts to find players that can “get people out of their seats.”
To some, it might seem like an obvious sentiment. Draft the player who supposedly has the highest skill with the draft position you’re in, aka the “best player available.” Plenty of members of NHL Draft and scouting social media have been shouting it from the rooftops. However, there are an uncountable number of instances where teams take the player projected to have the higher floor and lower ceiling instead of the lower floor and higher ceiling for the sake of being safe in every stage of the draft.
There are plenty of attributes that need to be considered when drafting players. Depending on where the team in question is drafting (for the Predators, it’s the 15th overall pick in the first round this year), the position of the player should be looked at, and how the prospect pool of said team is shaping up. However, there are some that would say you should always take the best player available, no matter the position and no matter what the current prospect pool looks like, which is a valid way to look at things, and it sounds like that is going to be the emphasis for Trotz and his staff.
The pieces of the puzzle for the individuals that often get pushed to the top of the list are size and physicality. And luckily for all of the “draft for skill, trade for size” enthusiasts out there, the Predators should be the team to watch in that department as well. That particular way of thinking is a much more progressive way to view team-building in the NHL. You can’t teach size, but you can teach physicality (hello there, Eeli Tolvanen), and across sports, there are athletes who are born with skills that other players just cannot achieve through practice for tens of thousands of hours. Sometimes, acquiring those skills means taking risks or “deductions” in other aspects of the player’s game.
Oftentimes, teams don’t follow through on picking the more “skilled” player because they’re not sure the size or physical ability of the person can translate to the NHL. This is a valid concern in some cases, but is also what causes players like Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson, Alex DeBrincat, and Johnny Gaudreau to fall farther than they should. But with the way hockey is played in today’s NHL, that strategy isn’t feasible for winning the ultimate prize, and hearing a new general manager in Trotz pointing out the importance of swinging at the “high risk, high reward” players is very refreshing.
Moving forward, the Predators are going to be a team that doesn’t play it safe, and that is precisely what they need. It’s more than well-documented that Nashville has never had a truly elite scorer, and their above-average drafted forward talent is either not with the team anymore or is still young. And considering where the Predators are likely to be drafting for the next couple of seasons, taking a swing at players instead of playing it safe due to a lack of elite drafted forward talent is a great recipe for success.
Before finishing, I think it’s important to mention the job that the Predators’ scouting team has done since the 2019 NHL Draft in picking up some high talent in the early, middle, and late rounds. Poile certainly made some big mistakes, but there has been no shortage of exciting draft choices made in the last few years under his watch, and hopefully, it will only get more exciting from here with Trotz moving in.
The important thing to remember is that with the successes come the failures. With this kind of thought process, there are going to be some misses with high and even middle-round draft picks. However, the way Trotz is approaching the draft and the way he’s telling his scouts to do their work is forward-thinking and reflective of how much the game has changed. He mentioned the direction the game is moving as a reason for letting John Hynes go from the head coaching job.
“When I look at where the game is going, what we have coming, and where we want to go, all that, I just felt like it was time,” Trotz said.
Of course, it’s one thing to say these things and then not execute them. However, bringing in a coach like Brunette suggests they will execute. If the future wasn’t already exciting enough, there’s plenty to look forward to this summer. The Predators played a specific brand of hockey before, and it was more than evident that they couldn’t keep up with the changes other teams were making. Now with Trotz at the helm and Brunette right beside him, it appears that brand of hockey is going to be overhauled drastically, and it starts with how they build through the draft.