Nashville Predators: Assembling Franchise’s All-Time Best Offensive Weapons
By Chad Minton
This list wasn’t easy to compile with the current crop of young talent. With that said, these players you can make solid arguments for. Here’s my honorable mention for offensive weapons that were ever so close to cracking the top two lines.
Viktor Arvidsson
The sample size is simply too small for me to include Viktor Arvidsson. One full season, although great, isn’t enough. We’ll get plenty more opportunities to see more of him in the coming years.
Arvidsson has his new seven-year contract official, per Jeremy K. Gover of the Predators Radio Network:
#Preds announce they've signed Viktor Arvidsson to a 7yr, $29.75m deal (AAV $4.25m) through 2023-24.
— なぎ裏垢女子 (@govertime) July 23, 2017
Thankfully, Arvidsson will be in Nashville for the foreseeable future. There’s no doubt he’s going to be a regular 30-goal scorer, and possibly a 40-goal scorer. Until then, he’s on the outside looking in for all-time great Predators offensive players.
James Neal
As awesome as James Neal was in his time with the Predators, he came up a bit short of my expectations. He’s a tough loss in the expansion draft, but he was a bit too streaky. He’s still an outstanding scorer that had flashes of electrifying moments, but he comes up just short of being considered all-time great.
Steve Sullivan
You might remember how challenging it was for the Predators to score when Steve Sullivan came aboard in 2005. Wasting little time upon arrival in Nashville, Sullivan put up a hat trick in his first game. He put a jolt of energy into the offensive attack for a team that lived off of winning games by grinding out one or two goals.
Sullivan ultimately lost out to Forsberg to crack the top two lines. Forsberg is already accomplishing what Sullivan did as a veteran. It’s a tough call to leave Sullivan off.
Scott Hartnell
Scott Hartnell is once again a member of the Nashville Predators, but he’ll be more about veteran leadership and less about scoring this time around. He’s another left winger that was a huge part of the early Predators teams that were new to making the playoffs. By the time he really reached his offensive peak he was lost to the Flyers.