Defenseman (Roman Josi, Brady Skjei,Adam Wilsby, Nick Perbix, Nicolas Hague, Spencer Stastney, Justin Barron)
Overall Grade: C+
If we're calling this a progress report, then the defense is at least showing some hope to eventually gets straight A's, but they got some more studying to do the rest of the semester.
The injury blow to Roman Josi is extremely unfortunate, but thankfully it's not related to his POTS diagnosis. He is considered week-to-week, which has stretched this defense thin while it was showing some modest improvement in defending for Juuse Saros.
The bright spots on defense are Spencer Stastney and Adam Wilsby. They are showing they're ready to be future regulars in this lineup. Wilsby has taken on a big role playing on the top pairing and is averaging 17:49 of ice time while playing in all 11 games so far.
Wilsby's offense should pick up as the season goes on. He has offensive instincts that Nashville could really use right now.
Stastney has also played in all 11 of Nashville's games, putting up one goal and three assists. Just an incredible and inspiring comeback story after he dealt with mental healthy problems and nearly retired from hockey altogether last summer. Stastney has given Nashville coaches reason enough to not be taken out for even one game so far.
Nick Perbix has also been a huge upgrade to the right side. He defends with a lot of discipline, and has even flashed a little offense. He is being asked to play a bigger role than he was ever asked to do while in Tampa for three seasons.
Perbix leads the Predators in blocks with 16 while averaging five more minutes of ice time than his career average of 16 minutes per game.
As for Brady Skjei, I really want to like this guy. I know he's talented and has it in him to be a huge factor in the Predators rebirth into a legitimate playoff team. The problem is there are just too many mistakes each game. He does mix in some great plays as well, like late in the shootout win over the LA Kings. Leaving his body out there to block shots and hobbling over the bench was commendable.
I haven't seen enough of Hague to give one strong opinion either way. He has played in just three games while Josi is absent. He does have an assist already and has racked up eight hits and three blocks. He is out there primarily to be a big body that makes it punishing for teams to rush into the offensive zone.
I give this unit C+ because it has done a better job protecting the net and making it more difficult for teams to score on them. However, they have also been burnth several times on counter attacks and are providing very little help on offense. No defenseman currently has more than two goals on the season, and that one with two goals is Perbix.
When Josi finally gets back into the lineup we'll start to see this unit's true identity with the original plan of a Josi/Hague pairing.