NASHVILLE — If the early indications are any sort of sign of what’s to come, it won’t be an uneventful night across the NHL when the 2020 NHL Draft gets under way on Tuesday.
Whether it’s trades, buyouts or the draft itself, there should be no shortage of intrigue when it comes to the Nashville Predators. The Preds hold the 11th overall pick in the draft and could go a variety of different directions with their pick.
An intriguing piece that has been thrown out there by Adam Vingan of The Athletic is goaltender Yaroslav Askarov, who figures to be the top goaltending prospect in the draft. The 18-year-old plays for SKA Saint Petersburgh of the KHL and could potentially be available for the Predators with their first pick.
With Pekka Rinne entering the final year of his contract and Juuse Saros’ inconsistent performances thus far, should the Preds go with a high-level goaltending prospect if the opportunity presents itself? Why are goaltenders not typically taken high in the draft even though they play one of the most important positions in all of sports?
Greg Wyshynski of ESPN joined Robby & Rexrode on Tuesday and gave his thoughts on why that position is viewed so differently in terms of the draft.
“It’s a combination of two things,” Wyshynski said. “First of all, it’s a buyer beware thing. For whatever reason, we’ve had a number of goaltenders that go fairly early in the draft that haven’t worked out. Somebody put it to me like this the other day….’A goalie in the NHL Draft is like a running back in the NFL Draft.’ You can find a few of them that are going to be franchise guys to build around, but a lot of times a goaltender is going to excel based on the system that you play, the development of that player, and you can kind of plug in different guys, kind of like the NFL with running backs and do pretty well for yourself. I think there’s a notion that you can find goaltenders late in the draft and not necessarily have to spend a first-round pick that should otherwise go to a forward or defenseman and not a goalie.”
WHAT TO DO WITH KYLE TURRIS?
Perhaps the number one topic on the mind of Predators fans right now is what is going to happen with Kyle Turris? He has four seasons remaining on his deal with $6 million per season left on the books. It seems unlikely that there’s a team out there that would want to trade for Turris without the Predators retaining a significant portion of his salary. With the salary cap remaining flat heading into next season and potentially beyond that, teams are going to have to be more cautious financially than we’ve grown accustomed to seeing.
Could the Predators buy out the contract of Turris? Preds GM David Poile did not take that off of the table when he met with reporters last week.
“The disappointing part when we made the trade for Kyle, not the disappointing part, but the good part, was that Kyle was a terrific player and he really gave our team a boost,” Poile said. “But for whatever reason it just hasn’t gone well in the last couple years, and those are the things in these next couple weeks that we’re going to weigh in terms of what we should do and what we’re doing. I don’t want to take anything off the table. My normal day is I probably talk to approximately 10 managers a day, so there’s a lot of conversations. This is not just a [Turris] conversation. I want to be open-minded. I want to see what the value of our players are, what changes we could make, if any, and then make a decision from that. So there’s going to be a lot of things that are going to happen here in the next week or so.”
Could the answer with Turris be to simply wait and see what he looks like with a full season under John Hynes? That’s certainly not off the table. But the bottom line is that so far it just hasn’t worked out between the Predators and Turris, and they’ve reached the point where they either have to find a way to fix that or part ways, even if it means a buyout.
WHAT COULD DAVID POILE HAVE UP HIS SLEEVE?
This is an interesting offseason for the Predators because of where they are in relation to the salary cap. Roman Josi’s contract kicks in to begin next season and they’ve got their core players locked in at longer-term deals. Could David Poile be willing to make a big move and trade a core piece?
There have been many reports that the Predators are shopping their centers out there to see what the value could be for them. That’s not necessarily groundbreaking news. General managers often test the waters and see what the league-wide value looks like for their players. It’s part of the job.
I find it unlikely that a core piece like Ryan Johansen, Matt Duchene, etc. gets moved this offseason. However, it may be smart for the Predators to at least consider moving Nick Bonino, who had a fantastic season for the Predators last year. He’s got one year remaining on his deal and could have good value with a Cup-contending team that feels like they’re one piece away from competing.
That wouldn’t help the Predators get better in the short term, depending on what the return would be, but there’s no question that Poile is re-tooling what this roster is going to look like heading into next season. Mikael Granlund and Craig Smith are both hitting free agency and the Predators need more bite to their lineup. I wonder if a player in that mold will be on the radar for the Preds as Poile weighs his options.
With the core of this group largely still in its prime, now is not the time to tear it all down and rebuild. However, there is no question that this group needs a shakeup and that retooling is necessary. Can that be accomplished by simply promoting from within with some of their young prospects, or will the Predators be a player on the trading market? We could find out the answer to that as soon as today.
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