A Gran(d) Addition in Nashville

2020-10-31

The Predators top brass of GM Eric Wolf and Assistant GM Peter Brand have quietly had a busy summer in the front office. Early in the off-season, on August 8th, it was announced by the EHE that Brent Seabrook was on waivers for the purpose of buyout. A bit of a shocking move. Nashville, a cup contender, tossing one of their best defensemen to the wind a few weeks after being once again pillaged by the Dallas Stars in the playoffs. So why was Nashville giving up a veteran player who played a big role in the playoffs?

“We needed to reidentify ourselves. Our defense has just not been good enough. Seabrook, although serviceable in his own right, his contract was going to create a ton of issues for us in fixing our blueline. He needed to be moved so it could open the door for better solutions on the blueline.”

Enter, Ivan Provorov. In that same day of waiving Brent Seabrook, Nashville shocked Preds’ fans by making an aggressive move – trading Swiss forward Timo Meier for Russian defenseman Ivan Provorov. “This defense needs a go to top guy like Ivan Provorov. He not only instantly becomes our number 1 defenseman, but it gives us that dynamic-all situations type defenseman we were severely lacking. I’m a huge Provorov fan, and I have kicked the tires on his availability every off-season in the EHE. So to finally get a deal done and bring him to Nashville is very exciting for us. With the addition of Provorov, you look at our blueline, and when you see him leading the depth chart with other guys like Krug, Brodin, Severson, and now Bear up in the fold, it’s easy to realize the blueline in Nashville is improving.” Wolf said

And then, another bold move. GM Eric Wolf, not holding back by stating he would be aggressive this summer, had dealt Pekka Rinne. Rinne had manned the Nashville crease for the last 2 seasons, but was sent to Anaheim for a conditional 3rd round pick. …  a conditional 3rd?!  The GM did not hold back when explaining “Rinne… just simply did not perform well enough. Our confidence in Pekka waned over the course of the 2 seasons he was here. When your back-up goaltender who is rated significantly less puts up EQUAVALENT numbers to your starting netminder for 2 years… there’s an issue there. Of course we wish him nothing but the best in Anaheim, but just like Seabrook, these moves needed to be made. Between moving out Seabrook and Rinne, it free’d up $13,200,000 in cap space. It was a black hole that was inhibiting us from making necessary moves we had to make to improve the roster.” Wolf said.

Afterwards, the Predators shipped away some draft picks to acquire immediate help at forward. Shipping a 3rd round pick + cash to the Islanders for Blake Coleman, and two late picks to the Devils for Tyler Pitlick. “With a weaker than usual UFA crop, expansion looming, and our top prospects not developing as quickly as we’d hoped, we decided to pay in terms of draft capital and cash to improve our depth.” Wolf said. Blake Coleman and Tyler Pitlick immediately slot into the line-up and fulfill important roles. “We’re not interested in going into a UFA bidding war for depth players.. we’ve done that game before and we generally end up burning ourselves. So with that said, I don’t mind paying draft picks to fix the issues we have among our line-up.”

 (Blake Coleman)

(Tyler Pitlick) 

Coleman plays a very versatile game and will look to fill what he can of the void left by Timo Meier in the Provorov trade. “We love Colemans game. He’s the type of sandpaper player that can eat important minutes and provide scoring depth among the line-up.” Wolf explained. “Pitlick has a motor that never quits. We look at Tyler Pitlick as the perfect 4th liner. He is reliable defensively, he hussles, finishes his checks, and does a great job cycling the puck on the boards. We wanted to improve our 4th line this off-season and we feel the acquisition of Pitlick is a great step in remedying that.”

EHE PREDATORS DRAFT TABLE

The Nashville Predators held the 26th overall pick in the 2020 EHE Draft, and their selection was met by immediate appraise from the live Discord chat when the pick was announced. At 26th overall, Nashville continued to build their blueline and drafted Helge Grans. We take a look at the Predators 2020 Draft board, with comments from Predators Assistant GM, Peter Brand.

ROUND 1 / PICK 26 – HELGE GRANS – RHD, 6’3/192 LBS – MALMO REDHAWKS, SHL.

Helge Grans joins countrymen Adam Boqvist, another highly touted Swedish defenseman Nashville drafted in the 1st round in 2018. The blueline continues to get brighter in Nashville with their newest addition of Grans.

“It was Helge Grans all the way for us. As early as a few months ago we had this kid pegged at the top of our list at #26. We love this kid. He is already playing confidently and putting up good numbers in the Swedish Hockey League as a 18 year old. He’s got phenomenal skating already and can walk the blueline with ease. Grans is very calm and patient in the offensive zone and he cycles the puck with fluidity and ease to his game. His transition game is top notch as well and can beat opposing players to the boards for pucks. He’s a rare prospect in the sense that there aren’t really any weak parts of his game, although he isn’t elite in any category yet either. With that said, there is a lot of untapped potential there and he can develop into an elite defender. Grans plays smart, safe hockey, but as he gets older and more confident, we truly believe he could develop into a very dynamic defenseman. It also helps that he’s currently playing in a league that is active right now, so him getting this additional development in was also a factor. All in all, Helge Grans is a player we’ve been highly coveting for a long time. We’re very excited about this pick.” Peter Brand quipped.

ROUND 3 / PICK 92 – ARTUR AKHTYAMOV – G, 6’1/163 LBS – BARS KAZAN, VHL.

“Between the first ever EHE draft in 2015, to 2017 – we didn’t draft a single goalie in those first 3 years. And we felt that absence as we struggled as an organization to have adequate goaltending depth or reinforcements in the pipeline. Fast forward between the drafts 2018, 2019, 2020.. we now have Veini Vehvilainen, Justin Annunen, Dustin Wolf, and now newly drafted Artur Akhtyamov.” Peter Brand explained, “We've developed an unofficial club rule to draft at least one goaltender a year. We learned our lesson hard passing on them so often, but we realize it is critical to have goaltenders develop in your system as opposed to forking over a ton of assets to get one on the trade or free agent market. We feel Artur Akhtyamov can be a diamond in the rough, so to speak. His career trajectory is mirroring that of top Russian drafted netminder Yaroslav Askarov. Obviously, Akhtyamov does not have as strong numbers, and is also 8 months older than Askarov, but he is already being relied on in the KHL and putting up quite decent numbers to boot. He has all of the right tools to develop extremely well, it’s just a matter of him getting the opportunity to do so. We just have a very good feeling about this selection all around, our whole scouting team came to the consensus we had to pick this goaltender.”

ROUND 4 / PICK 114 – DMITRY ZLODEYEV – C, 5’11/183 LBS – DYNAMO KRASNOGORSK, VHL.

“Zlodeyev was on of those slow and steady climbers on our draft list. Every time we did evaluations, he kept moving up the list. He plays a smart 2-way game and is already ahead of the curb in his defensive abilities at such a young age where he is counted on in all situations. Zlodeyev gives it his all and never takes a shift off. This is the kind of fundamentals we look for in our players. The more viewings we had on this kid, the more and more we liked him. After the 3rd round, we only had one pick left, a late 5th, which we intended to use on Zlodeyev. But as the draft moved forward we became less confident that he would still be on the board at our next pick (#150). Our scouting staff and myself felt that if we really wanted this kid we had to trade into the 4th round. So we gave up a 3rd (TB) round pick in 2021 to get it done. We like this prospect that much. We envision Zlodeyev improving his strong 2-way game every year as he develops in Russia to hopefully crack our line-up one day in Nashville. The tools are all there to be a solid 2-way 3rd or 4th line center one day. He’s just got to work hard towards it, and we have no doubt that he will.” Assistant GM Peter Brand said.

ROUND 5 / PICK 144 – ALEXANDER PASHIN – C, 5’7/154 LBS – TOLPAR UFA, MHL.

“We were intrigued enough by this player to move a 5th (DAL) in 2021 to the Islanders in order to secure the rights to Alexander Pashin. This is one of those draft picks where you blindfold yourself and hope the dart you throw hits the bullseye. Pashin absolutely oozes offense. A kid who wants the puck on his stick at all costs, and if he doesn’t have it, he will chase you down until he does. This could also be his downfall. There are a lot of elements to Pashin’s game that needs fine-tuning. He’s also very small. If he was 6’1, 190 lbs instead of 5’7, 153 lbs, he’d easily not have made it past the 2nd round. But we see enough there to take a gamble on him. He has game breaking ability and high end top speed. He can break defenders ankles from his puck handling into the offensive zone alone. We’ll be monitoring his career closely and we hope he can overcome all the hurdles currently limiting him, most notably his size. But that hasn’t stopped some small NHLers in the past like Marty St.Louis, for example. So we know it’s possible.” Brand said.

ROUND 5 / 150 – ELLIOT DESNOYERS – LW, 5’11/172 LBS – HALIFAX MOOSEHEADS, QMJHL.

“A super late riser for us. Two weeks ago Desnoyers was not even on our list. As the 5th round was coming to a close, our list was dwindling fast, and the few or so players that were on our draft board we weren’t particularly over the moon for. We almost dealt the pick until GM Eric Wolf said, ‘Well, wait a minute, what about this player?’ and brought Elliot Desnoyers to our attention. Desnoyers is playing in a organization we highly respect and is known for developing solid players. The Halifax Mooseheads. Desnoyers has been on a tear to start the season in the QMJHL. He’s playing with 2021 top prospect eligible Zachary L’Heureux which was an intriguing factor as we feel it’ll aid in Desnoyers own development and progress as a player. We like the tools Desnoyers brings to the table. He’s so much better off of the puck than he is on it. If you want a player who will selflessly run head-first through a brick wall if that’s what’s necessary for his linemates to succeed, then look no further than Desnoyers. He plays an honest brand of hockey in the defensive zone and never flees a moment sooner than his team has secured the puck.” Brand said, in the conclusion of his post-draft interview.

The Nashville Predators will now turn their sights to the RFA & UFA signing period. When asked what to expect out of Nashville, GM Eric Wolf had this to say “Expect us to be smart. We’ve been dummies during free agency before. I ‘think’ we’ve learned our lesson when it comes to trying to fix significant holes in our roster via free agency. It’s never a good idea to try to solve a top 6 forward issue, or a top 4 defenseman issue or a starting goaltender issue via free agency. Just look at the situations with Brent Seabrook and Pekka Rinne. Both brought in in desperate moves to fix our roster, but at the end of the day you my as well be putting on another pair of handcuffs. We won’t be looking to make these types of signings anymore. We’re a draft and develop organization first. But if we see something that helps the depth of this team and makes sense financial wise, we’ll look at it.”

That concludes the summer of 2020 in Nashville, folks. If you read this far, thank you for reading!

- Eric Wolf