Nashville Predators: The Five Tiers of Talent for 2021 Offseason

Nick Cousins:

In case you haven’t realized, I’m not a fan of the guys Duchene played with for most of the year. Nick Cousins is just didn’t do it for me. He’s a hockey player. He isn’t fast or strong, and he doesn’t handle the puck with any real finesse.

Nashville Predators

What Cousins does do, however, is commit penalties. Cousins was the second-most penalized player on the Predators, and seeing as how the Predators were horrific on the penalty kill, Cousins’ sloppy play likely directly led to plenty of goals for opponents.

Mathieu Olivier:

An OG of The Herd Line, Olivier is a very physical player, which we love! However, his lack of savvy and inability to control his temper caused him to accrue 70 penalty minutes in just 30 games, which we don’t love. 70 minutes is…a lot.

Olivier did far more harm than good, and was eventually supplanted on The Herd Line, thankfully. Hopefully as he gains experience, he’ll focus a little less on blindly smashing into people and more on actually playing hockey.

Colton Sissons:

Let me say this: I actually like Colton Sissons. He is a perfectly fine hockey player who plays his role acceptably. But there is no flash to him, no upside to speak of. I am confident we’ve seen his absolute best performances, and while they’re not bad, they’re nothing to write home about (I say as I sit here, literally writing at my home, about it).

Sissons is at the top-end of this tier, but it would’ve felt wrong to put him next to guys like Kunin, Trenin, or Johansen in Tier 3 because he lacks the upside those other guys possess.

Matt Benning:

Look, I get that Benning is a bottom-line defenseman. But we have to ask ourselves: should we demand better than this?

Every time Benning was on the ice, my anxiety skyrocketed. Either he was going to fail to settle/clear the puck, or he was going to pass to an opposing player, or he was going to mishandle a puck in the neutral zone, or he was going to end up in the penalty box (he was the 4th-most penalized player on the roster). I get that he was a lowly 6th-round draft pick, but still, the Nashville defense needs better than Benning.

Dante Fabbro:

Dante Fabbro clearly needs time to develop and get up to NHL speed. However, we still saw flashes of what can be, and what can be might be pretty darn good.

Is Fabbro the next Josi? Probably not. Could he be a slightly bigger Ryan Ellis? Absolutely, especially since he has decent speed and above-average vision of the ice and passing lanes, just like Ellis. Another Ellis would be a welcome sight compared to Benning and the next two players in this tier…

Erik Gudbranson and Ben Harpur:

I’m putting these two together because I have the exact same complaints about both of them. They are both giant men that lose 50/50 opportunities on the boards, they don’t hit as hard as they should, they both lose often contain and fail to clear pucks, and they both are below-average passers.

I considered making a “Yuck” tier, and both Gudbranson and Harpur would’ve been right in the middle of it.

Mark Borowiecki:

“BoroCop” missed half the season with an upper-body injury, but frankly, the team didn’t miss him. He’s mean and hits hard, and that’s about it. He would often sacrifice going for a puck or left his position to hit someone, and it sometimes proved costly.

Borowiecki is a low-upside player who isn’t getting any younger, and frankly has no place in the lineup.

Brad Richardson:

The second-oldest player on the Predators roster, Richardson was actually the guy who scored the game-winner for the Coyotes in overtime of Game 4 last year to eliminate the Predators from the Stanley Cup Qualifiers.

I’ll try to bury my previous feelings about him by saying that he’s a fine veteran leader, I guess. Frankly, it’s difficult to know what kind of an effect he had in the locker room. Regarding actual play on the ice, Richardson likely saw more ice time than may have been initially planned due to COVID and injuries, and while he showed grit and toughness, his time in the NHL is nearing an end.