The Nashville Predators didn't see their pick move during the NHL Draft lottery, but that isn't a bad thing. Now that they've got a firm place, they can begin planning for the future, or present.
Of course, they'll have to name a general manager, but whoever they do name (seems like Tom Fitzgerald, but who knows) will have a pretty hefty cupboard to work with.
That's why, at least going into this draft, the Nashville Predators are the team that is probably the best equipped to make a major draft-day trade deal.
A Whole Lot of Draft Picks
The Nashville Predators have 11 picks in the 2026 draft. That's a pretty big number, and 5 of them are in the first 3 rounds of the draft. In addition to their first round pick, the Predators own their second round pick, and the Minnesota Wild's pick, thanks to the Gustav Nyquist trade. They've also got 2 3rd round picks, their own, and Seattle's, which was flipped to them by the Stars as part of the Michael Bunting acquisition that they made at the trade deadline.
Now the Predators are likely going to use their pick at 10, but if they want to move up, they've got the ammo to try and do so, or they should be able to cobble enough picks together to trade back into the later half of the first round. This should be a relatively deep draft, so teams may be on the lookout to add to their quantity of picks, and would sacrifice quality in order to do so.
Moveable Players
The news just dropped today about the NHL's new salary cap figures and it changes the fortunes of a lot of NHL teams, the Nashville Predators included.
The NHL salary cap will climb to $104 million next season -- an $8.5 million increase. This gives teams some extra cap space to take some bigger swings, and maybe can help the Predators make a daring trade or two.
Suddenly, a player like Jonathan Marchessault is tradeable. A team is in a much better position to absorb his $5.5 million cap hit now. The Predators themselves are also in a better position to take on some of his salary to sweeten the deal now that both of their salary retention spots are opening up, with Mattias Ekholm and Colton Sissons' money both coming off of their books at the start of the new league year. A team looking for a player and a pick now looks a lot more favorably at some of those numbers.
You also have a chance to make a risk-reward play for a bigger-name player by trading picks and a young defender. With the emergence of Adam Wilsby and Ryan Ufko, you suddenly have options around a player like Tanner Molendyk or Cameron Reid. Both are untested, slightly undersized offensive-minded two-way defenders. With spots on defense becoming harder and harder to come by, maybe moving one of them now to take a real shot at a playoff run makes sense. The draft is an excellent time to do it.
So, they better name a GM fast, and whoever it is better start working the phones.
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