The Nashville Predators‘ devastating loss to the Minnesota Wild on Sunday might have all but cemented the expectation that has been for the past week or so; that they will be sellers at the upcoming trade deadline.
The loss puts the Nashville Predators at seven points behind the Wild, who are a division rival of the team and holding the final Western Conference Wildcard spot as we speak.
When you look at the likely hurdles the Predators will need to overcome to get to where they finished last year, which was the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, it seems highly doubtful that they will be able to make it back there this year.
The Predators made the playoffs with 97 points last season. They need 39 points over their final 28 games to reach that mark — a 114-point pace over a full season. It’d probably take 16-18 wins. Not happening.
— Adam Vingan (@AdamVingan) February 19, 2023
Clearly there is no reason for David Poile to continue to delay the inevitable, and considering that other teams have started to make moves in advance of March 3, the sooner he starts the better.
But one problem for the Predators, like a lot of other teams that want to blow it up, is that there are several contracts that they will have a hard time unloading, if they are even able to. And for the sake of being as realistic as possible, this list will not include Roman Josi and Filip Forsberg since they are two of the team’s top franchise pieces and are extremely unlikely to be moved.