After a lot of time to process what happened to the Nashville Predators this past season while watching the first few games of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, my prevailing thought is if this team can regroup fast this offseason.
Mostly everyone is instantly thinking a rebuilding phase is about to happen to a franchise that has avoided it for as long they can, and in the process missing out on high end draft picks. They're about to select in the top-5 of the draft for the first time in over a decade, assuming they don't do the unthinkable and trade the pick.
The Predators are also in a weird situation where they don't have any major free agent contracts to negotiate in the upcoming offseason. Luke Evangelista is a restricted free agent and it is fully expected he'll be re-signed and be a big part of the future. More on him later.
Your other free agents on the NHL level right now are Marc Del Gaizo and Jakub Vrana. That's it. In the prospect pool you have Kieffer Bellows as a UFA, Jordan Frasca as a RFA, Ondrej Pavel as a RFA, Luke Prokop as a RFA and Mark Friedman as a UFA. A couple others who are non-factors for the NHL level.
So with that, the Predators are in a position where they could trot back largely the same lineup as last season, or they could also facilitate some trades and get a little active in offseason free agency. To make room, they will have to waive some guys who are under contract in 2025-26.
We'll save this talk for another day and get right into the task at hand in this piece, which is the players most vital to the Predators bouncing back fast in 2025-26. And when I say fast, I mean returning to the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2026 and at least showing that this past season was just a fluke of epic proportions.
And for the sake of making this interesting and challenging, I'm only ranking six players so a few will be left off that are also obviously important to bouncing back, but not at the top of my personal list.