With the Nashville Predators looking to make up for the franchise's worst season since the inaugural year of 1998, there are some interesting milestones ahead for both the franchise and also individual milestones for the players.
Up until last season's nightmare of just 30 wins and 68 points, the Predators have always been a strong regular season team. They have the seventh-most regular season wins in the NHL dating back to 2010 with 652 wins. The Boston Bruins have the most with 715.
The Nashville Predators have always been a consistent regular season team up until recently
Even going back to 1999, the Predators are close to the top-10 in NHL wins with 988. The Bruins also lead this list with the Dallas Stars in second and the Washington Capitals in third.
The Predators won their 1,000th game as a franchise last season and have 1,016 wins as a NHL franchise. The franchise hasn't enjoyed nearly the same success in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, carrying a win-loss record of 56 wins and 75 losses.
If the Predators were to shock the world like they did in the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs, but actually finish the deal with a Stanley Cup, they'd bring their playoff franchise win total to 72. Just throwing that out there for heck of it.
For the franchise's all-time goal scoring, they're creeping up towards 6,000 goals for franchise history. Unless they're prepared to be one of the best offensive teams of our generation, they're not reaching the 6,000-goal milestone this upcoming season. They'd have to average over 4.5 goals per game to reach that milestone in 2025-26. The alien overloads will land on Earth before that ever happens.
The Predators will also take their 800th regular season loss in team history, unless they're losing seven games or less this upcoming season. Again, I think aliens are more likely to land here during the course of next season than that happening. So the 800th loss is coming probably before we get to December, but no need for a banner for that.
Tracking Stamkos' climb up the all-time list of NHL scorers
Let's get into some individual milestones coming up, starting with Steven Stamkos.
Stamkos has made his Hall-of-Fame career as an elite goal scorer, particular on the power play. He sits at 582 career goals and has a pretty decent chance at hitting 600 for his career this upcoming season while in a Predators sweater. Only Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby have more goals than Stamkos among active players.
Stamkos needs 27 goals, more of a long shot, to move into the top-20 among all players in NHL history. That would have him pass Jari Kurri and Dino Ciccarelli and into 19th on the all-time list.
If Stamkos has two more productive goal scoring seasons left in him, then he'll eventually pass Joe Sakic and Jarome Iginla at 625 goals and maybe even get close to the top-15 before retirement finally comes.
Finally as it pertains to Stamkos' upcoming milestones, if he can hit double digits in power play goals in 2025-26, then he'll pass such household names as Mario Lemieux and Brendan Shanahan for 238 career power play goals.
Forsberg has a lot of years left to pad his stats
Let's get to Filip Forsberg, the Predators' all-time franchise leader in goals with 318 and no one within the same universe of catching him. Roman Joi is the next-closest active player with 190.
Forsberg is getting close to hitting the 700-point milestone for his career, with 681 to enter the season. Josi is the only other player in Predators history to hit that mark, doing so last season and currently sitting at 724. More on that a littler later.
The all-time points race for the Predators franchise is much closer, also involving Forsberg and Josi. As of now, Josi holds a narrow 43-point lead on Forsberg on the Predators all-time points list. Forsberg passed David Legwand this past season.
While it remains unclear just how much Josi is going to be able to play at a high level this upcoming season, Forsberg could realistically make up a lot of ground and even come close to passing the Captain.
Let's just say Forsberg finishes conservatively around 70 points while Josi has struggles to shake off the rust. It's actually not far-fetched at all to think that Forsberg will out pace Josi's point production by over 40 points this upcoming season. It will be interesting to keep an eye on.
Either way, it's inevitable that Forsberg will eventually pass Josi on the franchise points list. He's over four years younger than Josi and plenty of time to pile onto his career totals long after Josi packs it in for retirement, which might come sooner than any of us want to admit.
Let's give the Captain his due for an incredible NHL career that hopefully has a couple more years left
I'm not going to pretend to know anything about Josi's diagnosis of POTS, the longform term is "postural tachycardia syndrome". A disorder that causes dizziness and fatigue accompanied by heightened heart rates. The good news is, the team and Josi himself has said they're managing it and he'll be 100 percent ready for training camp.
Even without this diagnosis, I would still be inclined to think that Josi has maybe two more years left in him of highly productive offense. This has always been what makes him elite. He's never been known as an elite two-way defenseman, but his ability to transition to scoring chances and his outstanding shot and release has made him a top-5 defenseman in the NHL for many years thanks to offense.
Among active NHL defensemen, Josi enters this season third in goals scored with 190 for his career. Assuming he can put together another mostly healthy regular season, he should hit the 200-goal milestone. The only other active NHL defensemen ahead of Josi in this category is Brent Burns (261) and Erik Karlsson (200).
Among NHL defensemen all-time, retired and active, Josi sits 27th in goals and 29th in points. Josi is in a neck-and-neck race with John Carlson of the Washington Capitals in all-time points by defensemen. Carlson has 725 and Josi has 724.
Both Josi and Carlson should surge into the top-25 on the all-time list in points by passing such players as Mark Howe, Scott Niedermayer and Mathieu Schneider.
If Josi shocks the NHL with another Norris Trophy caliber year and gets into the 70-plus point range, he'll hit 800 for his career and be right at the top-20 among NHL defensemen. How awesome would that be?
Stacking up Juuse Saros against other prominent NHL goalies
Goalie wins aren't my favorite stat to use when judging the netminders, but for the sake of this article, I'll start with this first when it comes to Juuse Saros' upcoming milestones.
Saros has 202 career wins for the Nashville Predators. That's good for 100th on the NHL all-time list, but Saros also has many years left ahead of him to make that climb up.
Let's just say that Saros averages 25 wins per season and plays all eight years on his current contract that begins this season. That would give him 200 more wins and put him at 402 wins for his NHL career. That would put him tied with Chris Osgood and ahead of Dominick Hasek and all-time Nashville Predators great and former mentor Pekka Rinne.
And quite frankly, my 25 wins per season projection is assuming the Predators are pretty mediocre for the next couple of years. If Saros has a couple dominant Vezina Trophy caliber seasons up his belt, he could eventually get close to top-10. I think the more realistic prediction is top-20 in wins when he hangs up the pads for good.
Saros' GAA has suffered the past two seasons, dropping him pretty far down on the list with a career 2.68 GAA among goalies with at least 200 career games. For comparison, Rinne retired with a 2.43 GAA, which is tied for 21st all-time.
With the Predators revamping their blueline to protect Saros better this season, maybe Saros chips away at the career GAA.
As for career shutouts, Saros has just 27. Shutouts are becoming increasingly more difficult for even the best goalies thanks to the game becoming much more offense friendly and faster. Even during a down year this past season, Saros had four shutouts.
With just five shutouts this upcoming season, Saros will climb up over 20 spots on the all-time list. Maybe I'm being overly-optimistic here, but I'm expecting a bounce-back year for Saros. Maybe not a Vezina Trophy nomination, but much better than this past season thanks to improved defensive support.
To round this out, to really get an idea of how much roster turnover has occurred for the Predators just going back the past five years, Ryan O'Reilly is third among active Predators players in points with 122 for the franchise. Colton Sissons was third but has since been traded, and next up behind O'Reilly is Luke Evangelista with 86.
All stats courtesy of Quant Hockey