Nashville Predators: Top Players They Could’ve Drafted But Didn’t
By Chad Minton
Nikita Kucherov (2011, 2nd Round)
To round out this list of draft sadness for the Nashville Predators we’re going back to 2011. An offseason where the Predators were riding high after getting a first round playoff series win over the Anaheim Ducks and finishing with 99 points in the regular season.
The Predators were looking to make that next big draft pick to push them over the top, but they didn’t have any first-round picks in this draft. Their first pick came at 38th-overall and they took Swedish goaltender Magnus Hellberg, who never registered an NHL start for the Predators.
An odd pick if you ask me considering the Predators already had Pekka Rinne at the helm, who had just posted a .930 save percentage the season before. They also had Anders Lindback backing him up, which was no scrub.
The Predators would get another chance to maybe take Nikita Kucherov, but instead they took Miikka Salomaki. I know there’s a lot of Salomaki fans out there, and I’m also one that appreciated his gritty style of play. But come on now; Kucherov ended up being one of the best players in the NHL, and Salomaki is now no longer in the NHL.
This one takes the cake for biggest miss the Predators made in their draft history. Not because Salomaki was a complete bust, but because they missed out on a franchise changing player and eventual Hart Trophy winner in Kucherov.
Must Read. Juuse Saros and the Vezina Trophy Race. light
To the credit of the Predators and GM David Poile, I didn’t come across any glaring misses by the Predators since 2011. They’ve made some bad picks, but there weren’t any big time player that were on the board when the Predators picked or players that would’ve made sense.