Turning Forsberg back into “ScoresBerg”
I’m going to start with the most obvious candidate in my mind to drastically benefit from Brunette’s hiring, and hopefully right out of the gate. That’s Filip Forsberg. A no-brainer for me.
Forsberg signed a massive 8-year, $68M contract in the summer of 2022 after concerns that the franchise’s most prolific forward in its history was going to leave in free agency. Although no one thinks the Predators front office got completely fleeced on this deal, it is imperative going into 2023-24 that Forsberg raises his level of offensive production to a new level.
This was following a career-year for Forsberg, and several other Predators players, the season before. A nasty head injury in February derailed Forsberg’s 2022-23 campaign, and now he’ll look to shake the rust off quickly under a new head coach in Brunette who should give Forsberg more opportunities to pile up the goals.
I’m looking for Forsberg to particularly feast on the power play with Brunette coming in. Although it will take gradual improvement, this team has improve greatly in this area and Forsberg needs to be the main contributor.
In 50 games last season before his injury, Forsberg had just four goals via the power play. In fact, he’s never really taken off in this area. Even in his record-setting 42-goal season in 2021-22, he had just 10 of those on the power play.
At the very least, I’m hoping to see Forsberg get back to double digit goals on the power play and help boost his overall numbers to that 40-goal mark now that Brunette is the bench boss.