Barry Trotz has Preds on verge of obsolescence

Last week, Nashville Predators general manager Barry Trotz joined 102.5 The Game for his weekly radio hit. I found the discussion to be defensive and disappointing for a variety of reasons, but one answer in particular struck me. Toward the end of the interview, Adam Vingan asked Trotz: “This organization has never really undergone one of those full-scale rebuilds, and I know that you are resistant to that. But when you look at the top scorers in the NHL, almost all of them were top picks… how do you find that franchise-altering player without undergoing one of those rebuilds at some point?” Trotz’s answer, verbatim, can be read here, and you can listen to it here (27:46).

What is so simple and yet so perplexing about his answer is that Trotz acknowledges this team cannot score and that only high picks like Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Connor Bedard are the franchise-altering faces of the NHL. But instead of recognizing that this franchise needs a player of that stature, Trotz relies on the tired crutches of defense, size, and that it’s just too hard to disregard the point.

This franchise is at a crossroads, and the man at the helm has a complete philosophical misunderstanding of the contemporary NHL.

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Trotz first argues that free agency is barren. Okay… let’s look at the draft. He then notes that the draft requires luck, and even when you are lucky, the true gamechangers only come along every few years. He even cites Detroit (three points off the Eastern Conference lead) as a team that “burnt it right down, and the draft was cruel to them.”

I am so exhausted by this argument. Every time an executive says bottoming out isn’t guaranteed, it’s always from a team stuck in mediocrity, fighting to be an afterthought of the playoff bubble each year—only to inevitably fall short. They would rather bet on the slim chance they sneak into the playoffs and “anything can happen,” than the stated odds of the draft lottery, where (and I can’t believe I have to say this) your chances improve the worse you are.

Since 2005, all but five first-overall picks in the NHL have been forwards. Of those 16 forwards, just one was a bust (Nail Yakupov), and nearly all of them have become franchise players, first liners, or guaranteed hall-of-famers. Of the NHL’s top 20 scorers today, just two of the 19 forwards were taken outside of the top ten or near the first half of the first round (Jason Robertson and Kirill Kaprizov).

In that same time span, Nashville has picked a forward twice in the top ten of a draft, selecting Colin Wilson (286 career NHL points) and Brady Martin; they also picked Kevin Fiala 11th overall in 2014, who is averaging 0.749 points per game in his career.

Okay, but can’t top-line forwards be found in later rounds like Robertson, Kaprizov, or Nikita Kucherov?

Hitting on those prospects is far more unlikely than a lottery pick busting. The NHL Draft isn’t that of yesteryear; the fantasy of finding Pekka Rinne or Henrik Zetterberg in the seventh round is largely gone. Scout teams are robust, video is on demand, and teams now see almost every prospect. Scouts are still important, but so is betting on talent. Nearly every example of a later-round star can be traced to a team betting on talent over something else, such as skating issues, geopolitical concerns, size, etc.

Since 2005, Nashville has drafted 73 forwards after round one. Four of them have gone on to be a legitimate top-six player for any amount of time (Evangelista, Arvidsson, Smith, and Hornqvist).

At the start of his general manager tenure, Trotz told his scouts to take swings on “guys that get people out of their seats.” In the three drafts he’s handled, the team has drafted the following forwards after the first round for the corresponding traits:

That’s maybe four picks I think meet Trotz’s stated criteria, and he already traded away one of them (for a defensive blueliner). In the 2025 draft, he didn’t even select a forward after the first round.

Time will tell, but so far, Trotz has done little to separate himself from the philosophy of past iterations of this franchise. The Nashville Predators do not bet on skill. They do not exploit market inefficiencies at the draft. They, in fact, rely on market efficiencies. They draft archetypes—the bruising, large blueliner, the responsible two-way center, the reliable 20-goal winger, etc.—to build the perfectly balanced lineup that will never be the worst team on the ice, nor will it ever be a true contender in today’s NHL.

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The good news is that the bottoming out is here. Even if this organization only cared about playoff gate revenue (as they did for many years), it’s far out of reach. They can play as hard as they want, and they’ll still have an excellent shot at the first overall pick.

But even if Gavin McKenna or Keaton Verhoeff or Ivar Stenberg come to Nashville next year, this franchise will be buried by obsoloescene without a change of philosophy. Trotz has regularly talked up infusing young players into the lineup, but this team is still largely risk-averse when it comes to prospects. They bake and bake and bake them in Milwaukee until the team can guarantee they won’t be overwhelmed a single game, and then they stick them with bottom-six minutes and little offensive help. A season like this is a valuable learning opportunity for those expected to be a part of the next core.

On top of that, a continued belief that hanging around the 20th-ish pick in the draft every year is more desirable than shooting for first overall and, in a bad year, landing in the top five will be catastrophic to the long-term success of the Nashville Predators. The NHL is a star-driven league. Nearly every Cup winner since the lockout has been led by a star(s) picked high in the draft. You can no longer win in this league on size or grit or defensive responsibility alone; you win on speed and skill. A failure to recognize this and a failure to act accordingly will set this franchise back another cycle or longer.