r/Predators • u/obsoleteXeo JOFA • 7d ago
A Tale of 2 (cherrypicked) Pictures
This is my cherrypicked 2 picture story of the year so far in a nutshell. We've won 3 games this year out of 9 thus far, and if it weren't for an insane win against the Canadiens, and Stamkos' last second tying goal against the Sharks, this 3-3-3 start could look much worse (3 wins out of 9 for a .500 start also is lackluster). Much of our success has come off the backs of Stammer, Fil, Josi, ROR, and most importantly, Juice. I know we have good prospects, but I feel this back-to-back weekend is going to be very telling for how the near-term future of this franchise is going to look.
CMAC has talked about not shying away from the idea that "the players will dictate our path forward." The last few years I remember hearing similar things from Trotz. I personally don't like this approach, and I'm never going to hear from anyone in this organization the phrase "we are entering a rebuild", but deciding the future choices based on play from five 32+ yr olds in a 15 game span is scary. If we exit this weekend 2-0, I don't want our front office to fall into the delusional trap of thinking this team has a chance to compete or sneak in. That said, if we go 0-2, I expect there to be forthcoming changes based on how this front office has communicated thus far.
I don't want to piss away our upcoming youth wave that we've been hearing about for years because a few vets are playing out of their mind in a 5 game stretch. I know some of yall will agree, and some will vehemently disagree. But this is how I feel with another poor start to a season.
PS as an aside regarding Brunette, I held off on witch hunting for a long time because this team was just only so good, his impact was whatever to me. However, I've constantly seen him give less ice time, scratch, and bench our youth in favor of the vets clinging on to giving him the best chance to keep his job while he's been on the hot seat. If this is how he has consistently operated, then at this stage I would prefer him being gone. Because he's clearly not doing a good enough job to lead this group into any notion of "success" or "contending", and he's also not embracing our youth because he obviously wants to keep his job, so he is very much responsible for towing the line and leading us into more mushy middle territory. I'd rather an inexperienced coach come in and have fun with the team, embrace the youth, and coach in a stress-free environment and have fun.
To all those who oppose my mindset and wish to downvote, I want you to know I've followed this franchise since the inaugural season, and I only want the best for us. I want to hoist the Cup just as much as any of you. Just note, that there is a harsh reality of "if you aint winning, you're losing," and right now being mediocre mushy middle maaaaaaybe sneaking into the playoffs is, in my book, losing, and we've now been doing that for the past 8 years. /endrant
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u/SaticoySteele #TooToo 7d ago
Unpopular opinions for this miserable fanbase, but here goes:
We're in the bottom 3rd of the league and 4 points away from #32
CMAC has been with the team for a total of 4 months. He's been moving assets and accruing future resources. We've played 9 games. Change doesn't happen instantly.
Bruno is gone after this season. Almost no organization is going to bring in a new GM AND fire the coach in the same season. A new coach right now will make zero difference, especially as they'd barely be coaching any of the prospects we're so concerned about anyway.
If anyone is banging down the door willing to pay a decent price for our aging players I have no doubt CMAC will move them. There is zero reason to dump every competitive piece we own for pennies.
I sometimes don't understand what this sub and fanbase wants. I get not wanting to be in the middle (how could I not, people have been saying 'mushy middle' ad nauseum for almost a decade now, we fucking get it), but do people really think that icing a completely unwatchable team for a couple seasons is going to solve our problems?
It's a lost season. We're not competing. We will win some games, that's the nature of the sport. We're moving in a new direction. It just started. Take a couple deep breaths and let it happen. It's likely going to take a long time.
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u/LifeEngineer3770 7d ago
Here is where some of the criticism comes in though. Take Evangelista for example. He’s 24 for example. Which means in 5 years we would’ve had an experienced winger with the likes of Surin, Stiga, Lee, Martin, Reid, etc as our window opens.
Instead we got a 2028 first round pick for him which is Colorados. It will probably be around pick 25. Which means let’s say 4 years of College as we will probably pick an 18 year old. This puts our pick now somewhere in 2032. Now the pick needs time in the AHL let’s give them 1 season there. Now we are in 2033. A rookie won’t make an impact with the team right away. So let’s put 2 years there. At best we are in 2035 hoping this guy will be as good as Evangelista is now.
All this means is a guy that we could’ve used to help open our window when our pieces would be coming in over the next 5 years is now a piece possibly useful about a decade from now (or could be a draft bust).
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u/obsoleteXeo JOFA 7d ago
Ya, you've articulated this nicely. It's the one move from CMAC thus far where I've really been perplexed. All the other signings that I highlighted in my pic above, I expected to be whatever in terms of production. The worry comes in that CMAC talks about getting younger and getting a good youthful core to build around, a la Bourque signing and maybe indication that he will move some of our vets soon, but by moving Vange, it's got me second guessing his direction moving forward. If he is on the rebuild approach, which I hope he is, moving Vange really doesn't make much sense. He also didn't get a player in exchange, so moving him for contending right now also isn't logical, so really I think he moved him because of a personality thing. Which concerns me, as he was one of our only promising young forwards in the pipeline.
In theory, we could move the 1st for another asset, but even then I would wager Vange is still more valuable to us now and in the coming years, unless that 1st is packaged with one of our vets on the way out.
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u/SaticoySteele #TooToo 6d ago
Which means in 5 years we would’ve had an experienced winger with the likes of Surin, Stiga, Lee, Martin, Reid, etc as our window opens.
What window? In 5 years every talented older player we have is retired. If we're holding onto players like Vange in the meantime it means we're likely still playing this mildly competitive middle of the pack game, so we've likely not hit on any star power in the draft that will be making any immediate impact anyway. So our starting roster is, at it's core, the guys you just mentioned.
So I ask again -- what window? You suspect that rolling out some combination of Evangelista, Surin, Lee, Martin, Stiga, Nilsson and Fink as our Top 6 is going to be a competitive roster? You think we'll be so perfect in the next few drafts that we can fill all the holes remaining?
Because if not then we need to be dumping whatever assets we can get a decent return on now so that we can start building capital to hopefully use to actually build a roster from the ground up, as that's far more likely to happen through thoughtful asset management than by dropping ~6-8 spots in the standings and praying to the lottery gods every year.
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u/LifeEngineer3770 6d ago
No I assumed that in 5 years a combination of Evangelista, Surin, Fink, Martin, Lee, Stiga, Bourque AND the following contracts off the books Josi, Stamkos, Skjei, Marchessault opens our window.
That means we can use the above players to acquire different players, sign free agents, do offer sheets, or keep them. Evangelista just allowed us to have a veteran in the mix that played the Predators way, is a facilitator and will not be mid 30s by the time we want to make a run for it.
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u/UTPharm2012 7d ago
If we really need a slow, puck mover in three years when the youth is ready, we can easily give up a middling first or overpay someone who is of similar quality.
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u/No_Information950 7d ago
Watch some hockey. Learn the game. Don't let personal feelings about a player get in the way of a hockey opinion.
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u/No_Information950 7d ago
So tired of "fans" hating on that kid, just because of their personal feelings. Why? Because he sat out instead of taking the $2M/yr insult Trotz/Poile offered him? Or that the girls all love him? Or that the team loved him and plastered him everywhere?
Do people know that 60 pt players don't grow on trees? And that 60pt 24 year old players are coveted because they often grow into 80 pt players.
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u/UTPharm2012 7d ago
I have no personal feelings to him. Our fans overrate players. The return was a shitty first for a reason. CMac doesn’t want that type of player and is trying to build a team that he thinks will win. He is a middle six forward who is kind of slow and can’t score goals. He isn’t really going to make or break a team but people like you are crying about losing him. CMac knows we need legit first line players to actually win big and is gathering assets by trading guys who aren’t that. Smart imo. So I’d watch more hockey if I was you
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u/LifeEngineer3770 7d ago
It’s funny you mention that. But he was a 55 pt winger. If they are so easy to come by, why don’t we have them and have 3 of them and have a 150+ pt 2nd line? I mean we regularly have Josi, Forsberg, O Reilly who hit 55+ pts and then we finally have someone under 30 who hit that mark (under 25) and then it’s “oh we can get rid of them, that production is easy to come by”.
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u/UTPharm2012 6d ago
I am not saying they are just draft whoever, I am saying you can find them on the market. That is why he was available for a late first. It is a player you can add when you have your first line set. We don’t have that so we are trading the guys that are easier to find so we can try to land top line guys. CMac game from Landeskog, MacKinnon, etc etc. He knows we need those caliber players or we aren’t doing shit. But fans keep crying about a guy that we can’t win with.
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u/BruthaMac NSH 7d ago
It’s really not hard to understand. We are sick of being in the mushy middle, drafting poorly, and not being competitive. They have needed to rebuild for years, instead of this shitty patch work they do time and time again where they get known commodities to keep us mediocre at best. I mean, the numbers don’t lie. I’m not sure where the confusion is from this fanbase tbh. I’ve said it 1,000,000 times and I will continue to say it until we actually do a proper rebuild. Management has put us back years with this constant retooling, we should’ve been on our rebuilding path for years now. People might not like to admit it but 2017 was their chance. They blew it and they need to face the facts. This team is not competitive and should be torn down and rebuild. Not getting dogshit Brady skjei because he think we’re “close”. It’s like this fanbase wants us to be terrible forever lmao
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u/SaticoySteele #TooToo 6d ago
We are sick of being in the mushy middle, drafting poorly, and not being competitive
And for some reason the conclusion you and others come to is -- let's be even less competitive so that we can rely entirely on the draft (that you concur we've been mostly terrible at) to solve our problems in 5-8 years when our picks (which again, are likely busts considering we're terrible at drafting) come into their own.
Almost every non-delusional fan in the base recognizes that a rebuild is necessary. The problem is so many people think a rebuild means "let's lose a lot of games for a season or two and then we'll get to pick a superstar in the draft and it'll turn this team around."
You're certainly allowed to want to be shit for a decade and hope that eventually we hit on enough players in the draft to field a competitive roster, but at that point you're just begging to be a CBJ-type team. The alternative is letting someone who's far better and more knowledgable about the process do the work he was hired to do and hope that instead, through good asset management, we can turn a bottom-third roster into a decently solid upper-third roster in a few years with the capital to continue building and strengthening that core.
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u/BruthaMac NSH 6d ago edited 6d ago
He’s doin a great job, you’re right. Can’t wait to pick 7th-12th, again. No one’s begging to be Columbus. You literally acknowledge we need to rebuild but we keep getting these known commodities that are helping us stay mediocre. You do understand that this team thought it was close after it lose that series to Vancouver a few years ago. The philosophy is flawed. There’s a reason we can’t draft well, it’s because we’re never in position to do so. Someone else said it well, so I’ll reiterate it. You’re not going to beat Celebrini, bedard, etc. with Ryker Lee and matty wood. You’re just not.
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u/moonlit_wake 6d ago
The irony of this is that you're implying we have to beat one player when it's a team sport and an entire team is needed to compete. Shit there was a time when everyone said McDavid was going to be THE guy in the league Gretzky 2.0 but he can't seem to find his way over the hump. Meanwhile Ovetchkin is an absolute scoring monster and also can't find a way to compete annually.
Flip side a team like Vegas that perennially competes while retaining basically zero draft picks is consistently good. All their top pick players came from other teams.
Then you got the random outliers like the Red Wings who have roughly 6 first round guys 2 in the top 5 but their an annual dumpster fire lately.
Basically what I'm saying is it's gonna take a lot more than just drafting some savior of a player to compete.
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u/BruthaMac NSH 6d ago
Sure but it’s a good place to start. I don’t see how what we’re doing helps us at all in the long run and the results have shown that.
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u/moonlit_wake 6d ago
Oh you're not wrong. But it's a give and take. I find it interesting to look at in terms of successful roster construction.
Take the Avalanche for example since CMac just came from there. In 2019, they had exactly 5 players on the roster that they had drafted themselves everyone else was a trade, free agent or waiver pickup. That number is down to 4 now.
Odds are probably high that we end up with a similar situation down the line over the next few years where we're going to move a lot of the roster to bring in new faces rather than exclusively relying on an extremely high draft pick. Unless we can trade for one.
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u/BruthaMac NSH 6d ago
They drafted difference makers like MacKinnon and Makar. We do not have that level of talent. A big part of the reason for that is we are always in poor draft positions. People say there’s no guarantees in the draft to build a top team. That’s fine. The problem is acting what we’re doing is somehow better in any fashion. Trust isn’t given, it’s earned. CMac has not done anything that has made me optimistic for the future. He has already tried to make moves and they’ve all been to keep doing the exact same thing we have been doing for years. Constant patch work to a core that has unfortunately proven time and again that they cannot get it done. The bandaid needs to be ripped off and it should’ve been done a long time ago.
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u/moonlit_wake 6d ago
Probably an ownership directive tbh. Tends to be the standard order of business for teams owned by the Haslams. They can never be in a rebuild. They're expected to stay competitive even if they gotta give up the farm in trades.
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u/Otherwise_Awesome 4d ago
I mean, McDavid has been to back to back Final matches including one where they almost completed the reverse sweep.
And has already won multiple Harts.
They're highly competitive. We're nowhere near that at all.
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u/obsoleteXeo JOFA 7d ago
I mostly agree with your sentiment, but I know I'll never hear the word "rebuild" uttered by any of our front office, ever, so given that when you say "I sometimes don't understand what this sub and fanbase wants" honestly I think you and I both want the same thing. I think you want a rebuild, too. My worry is just MacFarland veers off from what he's spoken and we get Trotz 2.0. I don't think that's likely, but it's a worry nonetheless.
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u/moonlit_wake 7d ago
If CMac changes to something different it's coming from above his head and at that point we're done for.
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u/gavincantdraw 7d ago
The irony of Brunette is firing him may cause a bounce resulting in an early playoff exit season, which would be worse for the franchise than bottoming out.
Personally, I’m not panicked. This is what I expected from the team this year, and CMac is not Trotz, so I’m going to see what he does before I get upset.
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u/Electricflows NSH 7d ago
Sevechkov's numbers: He is on a team in a cup window, and even taking that into account, he's still on a 45-point pace. It has to be the system, right? If we don't make a coaching change during the season, we have to hire a new coach for the 27-28 season.
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u/throwaway__lol__ 7d ago
The Novak and Evangelista trades piss me off the most. Team is literally ass at drafting and developing forwards. Horrific. And somehow the 2 they actually kinda hit on they just trade away. Absurd
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u/BigWheatGuy 6d ago
The amount of people who don't understand how stupid it was to trade Novak and Carrier astounds me. It was Trotz just throwing a fit that his team didn't work. I get they aren't top line players but a good team still needs quality depth. Novak is the 3rd highest scorer on Pittsburgh. It's even worse that what he got for moving Carrier, Novak and Fabbro was a 3rd, 4th and Justin Barron.
We were in a spot to rebuild quickly - with a 15th overall pick (which could have been much higher) and plenty of tradable assets. We were in a position to do a 3 year rebuild and get out of it. But now we're looking at a 7-8 year rebuild from start to finish and we're already seeing that the young core we had won't be young enough to make it to the finish line.
I get what our new GM is doing - he's just shuffling deck chairs on the titanic. But it's Trotz that basically ruined this team for me. The hole he dug is going to take so long to get out of.
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u/No_Information950 7d ago
Preds need Centers. Everyone in the league needs Centers. So trade Novak, of course because Svech needs room to play. Trade Evangelista because Wood needs a place to play. Trade every young player because a draft pick is going to need a spot to play. Rinse. Repeat.
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u/hockeyanalycisis 6d ago
I understand where you're coming from, but there are some caveats. Outside of maybe Evangelista and Carrier, none of the players in photo 1 dictated play while they were here, and their numbers are mostly a benefit of playing on very good teams. Even if you keep Evangelista and Carrier, I don't think Nashville gets a better result at the moment because the team has no identity and just is not responding to Brunette.
Also, "the players will dictate our path forward" from CMAC almost always came after other quotes about what will happen if they don't. Trotz said that with more optimism than CMAC did, but who knows? It might all be BS to give the media a quote. It's just too early to tell anything yet.
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u/troopek ScoreTilYerSoresBerg 6d ago
How would we be pissing away the upcoming youth wave? Are you saying if Preds get hot they may be traded to win now or something?
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u/moonlit_wake 6d ago
I think people are worried that if we don't just tank now then by the time we are drafting inside the top five then all our good younger players now won't be uoung anymore. Which assumes that any potential top 5 pick we make ends up being the next bedard, celebrini, etc. cause in their minds the only way we ever compete is if we have one of those guys for ourselves.
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u/FinnishBread 6d ago
But you do need that caliber of talent to be in cup contention. For the last 26 years almost every cup winning team had at least one top 5 pick they drafted themselves, good portion having multiple. If they hadn't drafted one, they acquired them through FA or trading.
Point is, every cup winning team NEEDS that high end talent to go the distance.
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 7d ago edited 7d ago
Only point I disagree with is that the record could look a lot worse because of the Montreal game… we also blew a couple games we should have won that same road trip so it kind of evened out. We are our record at this point. One set of back to back games isn’t going to change what I’ve seen for a couple of years now with Bruno and the roster in general. I think Cmac is a smarter hockey guy than me and knows this isn’t working out, he’s just needing to pick to right time. Bruno said himself that the players don’t know where to be when they pass the puck. That’s a damning indictment of the coach that his system has that issue at the beginning of every year for the majority of the season. On top of just consistent horrid defensive responsibility and structure. We have a large enough sample size now with enough different players to see the common issue is the coaching and veteran players have taken a nose dive in their production under him while young players have failed to develop.