Nashville Predators: Grading David Poile’s 2022 Offseason Moves after 20 Games

Zach Sanford: D

Ok, I’ll eat some crow here. I was pretty low key excited about the Sanford addition before a regular season game was played. I loved his pedigree of playing with winning teams and thought he’d become a mainstay, much like Jankowski is now, to the bottom six.

Sanford had one highlight reel goal to show for it, and then basically nothing else but wasted minutes and bad penalties. The last straw was a late penalty against the Coyotes that could’ve cost the Predators the game. Instead, the penalty kill came up strong, but that didn’t save Sanford. He was sent to waivers and not picked up.

Since being sent down to Milwaukee, Sanford has five games, one assist and 17 penalty minutes. Unless a rash of injuries occur, I don’t see Sanford returning to the NHL lineup. Swing and a miss here, but it looked good in theory at the time.