Nashville Predators: Why It’s a Huge Offseason for These Three Veterans

How Fast Can Forsberg Shake the Rust Off?

The Nashville Predators coaches and training staff made the wise decision to not rush Filip Forsberg back onto the ice even though the team was hanging around in the playoff race and certainly could’ve used their star forward.

Forsberg suffered the scary hit against the boards and head collision on the ice back on February 11 against the Philadelphia Flyers. He was rumored to be getting close to a return numerous times as March and April rolled on, but ultimately his season was over.

Incredibly enough, Forsberg still finished second the team in goals with 19, just showing how much roster turnover and offensive struggles the Predators went through.

Forsberg has to be the centerpiece to this veteran core and for the Predators to become a drastically more trustworthy offensive team in 2023-24. It’s just not sustainable to be a team that relies on near-perfect goaltending and stout penalty killing every night. You need reliable goal scorers, and while the youth stepped up, you need Forsberg to return to being at least a 30 to 40 goal scorer.

As Forsberg eases back into action on the ice this offseason, it will be paramount that he can shake some rust off. Fortunately, he has plenty of time and is all the more reason why shelving him for the remainder of 2022-23 was the correct decision.

Forsberg will be on that Nashville Predators top line, probably centered by either Cody Glass or Juuso Parssinen and possibly Matt Duchene on the other wing.

We didn’t need another setback that, more important than anything could’ve impacted his long-term health after hockey, and also kept him from having a complete offseason.

Forsberg’s rehab and recovering seems to be going smoothly as he’s enjoying being a minority owner of Nashville SC of the MLS.

Forsberg was the major headline of the 2022 offseason as he was due for a massive new contract and the fear of losing him on the free agency market. Instead, the Nashville Predators signed him to a long-term eight-year contract with a No Move Clause and $8.5M AAV to 2030.

Now Forsberg has to gradually get back into the swing of things and come out ready to live up to getting the enormous contract that most of us wanted him to get.