Oct. 30: It appears Del Gaizo’s demotion was a temporary one to bank cap space. He’s back up with the Preds today, the team announced.
Oct. 28: The Nashville Predators are switching things up on their blue line. The organization announced they reassigned defenseman Marc Del Gaizo to their AHL affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals.
The transaction indicates the Predators are ready to re-insert defenseman Dante Fabbro into a starting role. Five defensemen on Nashville’s roster have played in each of the team’s eight games while Fabbro (five) and Del Gaizo (three) are the only two with less than eight.
Nashville won two out of the three games with Del Gaizo in the lineup with promising results from the defenseman. Del Gaizo failed to crack the scoresheet during this call-up while averaging 14:23 of ice time per game but his possession metrics proved encouraging. His 59.6% CorsiFor% and 0.8 E +/- according to Hockey Reference show that the Predators performed better with Del Gaizo on the ice despite the small sample size.
The results haven’t been as promising with Fabbro. The former 17th overall pick of the 2016 NHL Draft has been held scoreless after five games with Nashville this season and has produced relatively null possession metrics with a 51.6% CorsiFor% and 0.0 E +/- while averaging 13:24 of ice time.
He didn’t perform much better next to captain Roman Josi two nights ago although the team secured an overtime victory against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Nashville must have seen something encouraging in Fabbro’s game giving them confidence to reassign Del Gaizo.
The latter will return to an Admirals team after already registering two games played earlier in the season. The team hasn’t missed him much with a promising 6-1-0-0 record to begin the 2024-25 AHL campaign.
Worried every time Fabbro is on the ice. He and Josi were on the ice for Tampa’s first 2 goals last night, and on most of Tampa’s odd man rushes in the 3rd. Wish Stastney would comeback or we could get an update on him.