Playoff Post-Mortem, Nashville Predators

Series Summary

The Preds’ Cinderella season comes to an end at the hands of the Avalanche in a gentleman’s sweep. Sadly for Nashville, overtime losses don’t count for anything in the playoffs, or else this series might have gone on a little longer.

Who Showed Up

Kevin Fiala (2G / 2A) and Travis Konecny (2G / 2A) led the team in scoring, while Nicklas Backstrom scored the only game winning goal for the team in the series. And while a 0.896 for the series may not look stellar for Carter Hart, he gave his team a chance to win four of the five games, posting a 0.911 when you remove the six goal clunker in game two.

Who Didn’t

Nashville didn’t do a whole ton of scoring in this series, so there are number of names that could be brought up here. I’m going to give a nod here to their entire defensive corps though, with Dumba, Provorov, Chabot, Byram, Lindgren, and Skjei combining for only four assists over the course of the series, with none of them breaking the multi-point threshold.

Offseason Preview: UFA

The pro roster has a trio of pending UFAs this year in Nicklas Backstrom, Brady Skjei, and Tanner Pearson. But Carter Hart is due a raise, and Kasperi Kapanen and Travis Konecny need new deals. This offseason is likely to take some cap gymnastics from the newly Nashficial GM to make everything fit.

Offseason Preview: Entry Draft

The Preds will be picking late in the 1st round, and then twice in each of the next three rounds. They’re set up well to make deals in order to alleviate their previously mentioned potential cap issues and add cheap talent to their roster.

Offseason Preview: Expansion Draft

7 F: Nick Backstrom, Josh Bailey, Travis Konecny, Kasperi Kapanen, Anthony Cirelli, Christian Fischer, Kevin Fiala

3 D: Matt Dumba, Ivan Provorov, Thomas Chabot

1 G: Carter Hart

Potentially Available: Mathieu Joseph, Adam Gaudette, Anthony Beuvillier, Brady Skjei, Ryan Lindgren