Nashville Predators: Realistic Free Agent Defensemen to Watch
By Chad Minton
Jamie Oleksiak, Dallas Stars, 2020-21 Salary: $2.137M
A physical mammoth of a defenseman, Jamie Oleksiak will get a lot of looks on the open market if the Dallas Stars are unable to retain him. He’s enormous and plays very well analytically speaking on top of being a big bodied defender.
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Oleksiak isn’t a major scoring defenseman, but he does everything else well that you want out of a second or third-pairing defenseman. And what’s most intriguing about Oleksiak is he won’t require too much of a big payday for a team that’s got the money to spend.
I’m not saying the Predators should heavily pursue any expensive defenseman out there, but as the offseason rolls on who knows if they’ll find themselves in a precarious position to replace a void in the defensive corps.
Oleksiak is a player I really like for a team that wants to play a very physical and bruising brand of hockey that gives the other team nightmares to get set up in the offensive zone. The Predators seem to be trending that way, so Oleksiak might be intriguing to them.