Nashville Predators
The Nashville Predators cap situation hasn’t demolished their team just yet, but it will soon enough. Thanks to them overpaying for Matt Duchene, Ryan Johansen and Kyle Turris, they are left with three mostly ineffective centres who cost them $22 million per year for the next four years before Turris mercifully becomes a free agent.
The Predators were barely good enough to be a playoff team this year and don’t have a ton of great prospects coming up to fix that. They also don’t have the cap space to bring anyone in that can help them offensively, nor can they re-sign middle six forwards Mikael Granlund and Craig Smith.
It is a mess and it will only get worse as the players on bad contracts get older and Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis start to decline on the blue line with their monster contracts.
The Preds are going to be forced to ship players out before they reach free agency because they won’t be able to afford to keep them.
One player they might have to make a decision on sooner than later is Filip Forsberg. The Swedish winger has proven to be an effective goal scorer and could get the Predators a nice package of picks and prospects at the moment. He has two years left on his contract at $6 million but it is unlikely they will find room to keep the 26 year old beyond that, unless they find a sucker to take on the Johansen contract in the mean time. Good luck with that.
The Habs could certainly use Forsberg who has scored at a 30 goal pace each of the past five years and more importantly, scores at that rate in the postseason as well.