Nashville Predators 2024-25 Player Spotlight: Scott Wedgewood knows his role

Dallas Stars fans were less than thrilled to see their backup goalie Scott Wedgewood taken by the Nashville Predators in free agency earlier this offseason.

After two seasons of quality backup play from Kevin Lankinen, the Predators are now turning to Wedgewood to be the trusted backup to Juuse Saros. Wedgewood comes in at a modest price of two years at $1.5 million AAV.

It is unclear if the split of starts and the heavy workload of Saros will change at all with Wedgewood here, but I would suspect not. Wedgewood had 28 starts for the Stars last season, and has never started more than 32 games in an NHL season.

Wedgewood is the new backup in town

When you think about the history of the Nashville Predators, they've been very fortunate with backup goalies. With the exception of a rocky time with David Rittich, they've always had quality backups going back to the first seasons in franchise history with Tomas Vokoun behind Mike Dunham, and then eventually Chris Mason behind Vokoun, Dan Ellis and Pekka Rinne.

Lankinen filled the role very effectively behind Saros the past two seasons. There were even times when fans wanted Lankinen to get more starts from Saros, and Lankinen became the trusted road warrior in tough environments.

Is Wedgewood ready for a similar role of fewer starts, but thrown into difficult road matchups?

On the other hand, even with really strong play from Lankinen, he only saw 17 starts behind Saros last season. I don't see why Brunette would suddenly change that strategy and give Wedgewood much more of a share of the starts in 2024-25 than he ever did with Lankinen.

With that said, you can't underestimate the vital importance of reliable backup goaltending. You can't have a liability as the backup. Someone who gives the opponent easy goals and a convenient two points. I don't expect Wedgewood to be that type of goalie, but instead should be just as effective as Lankinen was.

Wedgewood did struggle quite considerably in his Goals Saved Above Expected, finishing at -9.4. For comparison, Saros had a down year in this department with a -3.0, while Lankinen was much better in this area at 4.1.

I'm sure the Predators would've loved to have kept Lankinen, but he had starter aspirations and decided to test free agency. He still hasn't been signed to a team yet, which is really surprising.

Another concerning metric that Wedgewood showed last season for Dallas was his Quality Start percentage, which measures how the goalie performs as compared to the average in save percentage and shots faced.

Wedgewood had a .464 Quality Start percentage, much lower than Saros and Lankinen. So he has to show improvement there if he's going to be trusted to give Saros more rest throughout the grind of a 82-game season.

Wedgewood will need a strong training camp to build confidence

In a recent piece from John Glennon of The Nashville Post, Wedgewood talked about knowing his role and threw out a number of 25 to 30 games, but that he can take fulltime starter minutes as well. He stressed as well that he's a team first guy and can be effective in back-to-back road game situations, which is where Lankinen was usually used.

There is also rumblings that Wedgewood will have a training camp battle with star goalie prospect Yaroslav Askarov. Even with Askarov being considered a trade candidate now that the organization has signed Saros to eight years, there's still a possibility that Askarov outperforms Wedgewood in training camp. I'll it a long shot that actually happens, however.

Wedgewood has bounced around a bit since 2021-22. During that season he played for three different teams but still rallied for a .910 save percentage. He's a former third-round draft pick from 2010 and is looking to find a long-term fit in Nashville.

Unless Wedgewood just absolutely dominates in his occasional starts to open the season, I see another scenario of Saros being a workhorse with 60-plus starts. He's the franchise guy just signed to eight years, so don't expect Head Coach Andrew Brunette to suddenly balance out the starts more and give more of Saros' starts to Wedgewood.

If Wedgewood gets more than 20 starts I'll be surprised, and if he's unreliable, then I can see Askarov getting some starts as well. Of course that would force Wedgewood onto waivers and not be ideal. It would take some extraordinarily egregious play from Wedgewood for it to come to this.