Subscribe
Follow Us
The Nashville Predators probably could not have envisioned a worse start to the 2024-25 season, especially considering the moves general manager Barry Trotz made this summer.
Through six games, the Preds are dead last in National Hockey League standings with an abysmal 1-5 record — and the GM is already making moves to rectify the slow start, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman. Trotz is looking to improve the team's center depth, but there are reportedly a lack of options on the market.
“This is the ‘we’re-still-seeing-what-we’ve-got' phase. Predators GM Barry Trotz has the second-best hockey radio hit on The Game in Nashville. On Tuesday, he told hosts Willy Daunic, Derrick Mason and Adam Vingan, ‘No one is trading anyone right now. I would like to get a centre, but no one is giving their centremen away,'” Friedman wrote in his latest 32 Thoughts column on Wednesday night.
The hockey insider added: “Two toughest things to find: a stud defender and a top centre. No more zero in the win column after Tuesday night, where they opened with Colton Sissons between Jonathan Marchessault and Steven Stamkos.”
Stamkos has gotten off to a particularly slow start — with just a single point in six games — and Trotz could be looking for a center to complement he and Marchessault.
Sissons has zero points in six contests himself so far to start the year, and in 2023-24, he set career-highs with just 35 points. With Tommy Novak also not looking like the solution at 2C, it makes sense that Trotz would be testing the trade market.
Predators are off to a shockingly bad start
After five consecutive regulation losses to begin the campaign, the Predators finally got in the win column during Frozen Frenzy on Tuesday night. The Preds beat the Boston Bruins 4-0 at home, with Juuse Saros snapping a four-game slump by posting a 33-save shutout against the cross-conference foes.
“You go through a [losing streak] like this, you’ve got to celebrate [a win] a little bit and enjoy it,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said after the triumph, per NHL.com's Robby Stanley.
“It was well-deserved. I think we were squeezing our sticks and feeling a little bit of the heat, and it could’ve [gone] two different ways. I think today they stayed positive, they encouraged each other, and they helped each other get out of it a little bit here for one game.”
With that, Nashville has taken the first step toward turning its season around ahead of a trip to Chicago to play the Blackhawks on Friday night.
It'll be interesting to see if Trotz will swing a trade over the next couple of weeks to try and get Marchessault and Stamkos going. The former has been fine, managing four points through six games, but the latter only has a single goal to his name after playing at a point-per-game pace in his final year with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
If the Preds can find a reliable 2C to pair with the two Stanley Cup champions, it could be just what the roster needs to start stringing some wins together in 2024-25.
