Barry Trotz's Nashville Predators need more to get free of NHL's 'mushy middle' | Estes

The NHL has its contenders. Usually, right now, they are still playing, while the league’s pretenders are crossing fingers again at the draft lottery, hoping for that next big star.

Somewhere between the two extremes, you'll find the Nashville Predators.

Barry Trotz aimed to change that. When he started last year as the Predators’ general manager, he talked about breaking out of that “mushy middle" of good but never good enough. Trotz meant it, too. He leapt boldly into that long-awaited rebuild, selling off much of the old roster, firing the old coach, changing seemingly everything, down to signage in hallways outside the locker room.

Guess what didn’t change in Trotz's first season?

“We're still there,” Trotz said.

That’s the “mushy” rub after a Predators season that ended with heady optimism. It went far better than expected, yet maybe too well for their own good. End of the day, it's more of the same. They lost an opening-round playoff series for the fifth time in the past six years.

So now what?

"Everything is on the table,” Trotz assured Tuesday as he moves into a new summer, seeking the type of franchise-alerting splash that evaded him in his first offseason with the Predators. He talked about putting “a big value” on drafting and free agency and trades.

“We've got some draft capital that will allow us to be flexible and use those assets to acquire (talent),” Trotz said. “That's what we're going to have to do.”

Trotz's conviction is encouraging, because he had to right last year. Here’s hoping that surprising, yet mild, success – in large part due to those sweeping changes he made – doesn’t coerce him away from his original plans.

Because that can happen. Happened already to Trotz, who hedged before this past season’s trade deadline.

Can’t blame Trotz for it, much the same way it was always difficult to blame predecessor David Poile for the same thing. No GM wants to hurt chances midseason for a team bound for the playoffs. There's always that allure of what can happen in hockey's postseason, where dang the odds, anything is possible.

In that moment, it's easy to get lured into awarding three-year, $10.5 million extensions like the one Trotz gave Tommy Novak, because what message would you be sending your hard-working players if you dealt a valuable teammate like Novak or, even more so, a top-notch goalie like Juuse Saros?

TROTZ ON WHAT'S NEXT: Trotz on getting faster at forward, free agents, Juuse Saros

So you don’t. Instead, you gear up for a run. You add pieces. You sit developing youngsters or send them to Milwaukee. You use a lineup in the playoffs with an average age of more than 29, in which only one player, forward Luke Evangelista (22), is younger than 25.

Then you lose in the first round and show up at an end-of-season press conference talking about needing improvement in your top three lines (that was Novak struggling in the playoffs), and you have people like me ask about how you didn’t want to be in the “mushy middle” of the NHL.

You reply, “We’re still there.”

And it’s the perfect answer – timely reassurance that Trotz is far from satisfied.

I believe him, too, because Trotz proved he was willing to do the dirty work the Predators had needed for years. The reward for such gumption was a 2023-24 team better than it should have been, because many of Trotz's moves played out brilliantly.

He signed Ryan O’Reilly and Gustav Nyquist to play alongside star forward Filip Forsberg on a top line that carried the offense for much of the season.

“Whatever happened in the summer was big for this franchise,” Forsberg said. “Obviously, Trotsy coming in and making a lot of decisions and bringing guys here that clearly had a really big impact on our team. … Once we started hitting our stride, we were one of the best teams in the league for a reason.”

Estes: This wasn't an end for Nashville Predators and Andrew Brunette, but a beginning

Trotz's biggest home run was hiring Andrew Brunette, who is one of three finalists for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year. A deserved honor for Brunette, no doubt, but also a reflection of the on-ice talent Nashville was perceived to be lacking in his first season.

Rightfully so. There were band-aids on this roster, older stop-gaps employed for short-term benefit, leaving some hard lessons that’ll still need to be learned by younger Predators. Eventually, bandages are ripped off, and this could grow worse before it becomes better.

Brunette is already bracing fans for that possibility.

“It might be bumpy next year,” said the Predators’ coach, “but I think we've built a little bit of an identity, a little bit of that relentless kind of attitude that I think we can get through those ups and downs and have that as a backbone.”

For that reason and others, the Predators are better now than they were a year ago. They've learned, above all, that have the right GM, the right coach and the right system to one day challenge seriously for a Stanley Cup.

“Definitely encouraging,” Forsberg said, “But at the same time, I feel like we had more hockey to play.”

That aftertaste sure feels familiar, even if little else was.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Barry Trotz's Nashville Predators still looking to get out of NHL's 'mushy middle'