Nashville Predators deal Cody Glass to Pittsburgh Penguins in salary cap dump

There's a price to pay when you go all in for a Stanley Cup through free agency, and the Nashville Predators are baring the brunt of that in a Cody Glass trade.

First reported by Elliotte Friedman on Tuesday, the Predators are trading Glass to the Penguins in return for ECHL prospect Jordan Frasca. A prospect with a low NHL ceiling and looks more like AHL depth at best.

Frasca is undrafted and played in just 11 AHL games, and played the majority of his junior career in the OHL where he hold a career high 87 points from the 2021-22 season with the Kingston Frontenacs.

The Predators also dealt the Penguins a 2025 third-round draft pick and a 2026 sixth-round draft pick. This move frees up an additional $2.5 million in cap space for the Predators, bringing their projected cap space total to just under $3.1 million, per PuckPedia.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now with Glass after the Predators opened up free agency with enormous signings in Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei. Bringing back Alexandre Carrier also dwindled the cap space down to around $600,000, with Philip Tomasino and Juuso Parssinen both RFAs and needing new deals.

You see this happen a lot in the NHL. Teams are forced into salary cap dumps and basically just hoping another team will take some cap space off their books. This is why the trade is so lopsided. A team like the Penguins wasn't going to give Nashville anything of high value to take Glass off their hands.

And for Glass, it's a best case scenario for him. I know there's a lot of diehard Glass fans in Nashville who are sad to see him go, but once you process the emotions, you'll be happy that he's getting a fresh opportunity somewhere else.

Glass was likely going to be a healthy scratch often on this new-look Predators squad, and when he did play, his time on ice was going to be limited and he was going to be buried on the depth chart.

Now Glass will have to prove himself with the Penguins and try to earn a starting spot out of training camp. That team is going into somewhat of a rebuild, and it's not going to be easy for him to immediately be a starter there at center, either.

As for the Predators, their attention now has to turn to getting Tomasino and Parssinen new deals. They have acquired the cap space to do so now, but there's still not a ton of flexibility here. The margins are razor thin to get both of these players signed.

General Manager Barry Trotz has to figure out who he prioritizes more to get signed first, Tomasino or Parssinen. We wrote about choosing between the two if it comes down to it earlier this month.

Glass' stint with the Predators comes to an end over three seasons and 121 NHL games while amassing 20 goals and 29 assists. He had a hat trick in an emotional game against the Colorado Avalanche on March 2nd, 2024, and also scored a goal against the Columbus Blue Jackets on April 13 which is his last game with Nashville.

This doesn't change much for the immediate future in terms of the Predators' hopes to be deep playoff contenders. They've already committed to what looks like a veteran heavy lineup, with their younger talent filling out the depth of the lineup.