The Nashville Predators are doing some house cleaning today.
At the end of every season competitive teams like the Nashville Predators are forced to reevaluate their roster and make tough decisions about how the will move forward and hopefully become more competitive in the future. This is clearly what the Predators have been doing since being eliminated in the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs and on Saturday it all came to a head when Nashville Predators general manager David Poile made a number of significant changes.
The biggest of course was the trade that went down earlier today, a trade that saw the Predators bid farewell to ultra popular defenseman P.K. Subban. That however was not the only move from the Predators today as now Predators insider Adam Vingan of The Athletic is reporting that the Predators will be parting ways with as many as 4 more of their players this summer. According to Vingan the Predators have informed veteran forward Wayne Simmonds, veteran forward Zac Rinaldo and veteran forward Cody McLeod that they all will not be back next season as members of the Nashville Predators.
This of course will cost the Predators significant depth, even if some of the players mentioned were not the biggest contributors last season, and they may not be the only ones shown the door. Although Poile was nowhere near as definitive when it came time to mention beloved NHL veteran Brian Boyle, according to Vingan Poile made it sound like it was very unlikely that Boyle would be back next season as well. Perhaps the shedding of Subban's $9 million in salary could change that, but Vingan made his report after the trade was already completed so that also seems very unlikely.
It never really seemed likely that the Predators would be able to sign Simmonds following a deadline deal that brought him to Nashville as a rental for a playoff run, and that seemed even more unlikely after he suffered a failure significant injury early on in his tenure with his new team. Simmonds of course has been expected to hit unrestricted free agency this summer for several weeks now, this merely confirms that it is going to definitely happen now.
