The Nashville Predators have acquired goaltender Justus Annunen and a 2025 sixth-round pick from the Colorado Avalanche, in exchange for veteran goaltender Scott Wedgewood.
Goaltending has been the sore spot of Colorado’s early season. They’ve already iced four different goaltenders while dealing with nagging injury and inconsistent play from both Annunen and starter Alexandar Georgiev. The latter has seemed to finally get his feet back under him, posting three wins and a .891 save percentage over Colorado’s last five games – an improvement over his season-long stat line of seven wins and a .872 save percentage in 15 games. Perhaps on the back of that momentum, Colorado has decided to buy some added veteran experience for their backup role – acquiring the 32-year-old Wedgewood in his seventh NHL season.
Wedgewood is off to a bit of a shaky start this year, with just one win and a .878 Sv% through five games with Nashville so far. He was a much more notable piece of the Dallas Stars’ success over the last two seasons, recording a .915 in 21 games in 2022-23 and a .899 in 32 games last year. Both performances stood well behind perennial Stars starter Jake Oettinger, convincing Nashville to sign the veteran Wedgewood to a two-year, $3MM contract this summer. That deal, coupled with starter Juuse Saros’ eight-year, $61.92MM contract extension, effectively pushed top prospect Yaroslav Askarov out of the Predators organization. With no clear path to a starting or backup role in the NHL, Askarov was instead traded to the San Jose Sharks for top prospect David Edstrom, goalie prospect Magnus Chrona, and a 2025 first-round pick.
Predators general manager Barry Trotz told Sportsnet at the time of his trade that the Predators had a robust development plan for Askarov – one that would track him into the Nashville starting role. With the star Russian moved out, Nashville will now replace their role of top goalie prospect with the 24-year-old Annunen. It was meant to be a breakout year for the Finnish netminder, after posting a dazzling .928 in 14 games with Colorado last season; and adding a .908 in 23 AHL games. He won Colorado’s backup role out of training camp, but hasn’t found the same success he showed last season – with a meager six wins and .872 save percentage in 11 appearances. Annunen, originally a third-round pick in 2018, has been lauded as one of the best goalie prospects across the hockey world in recent years – spurred by a four-year, 49-game career in Finland’s Liiga, where he posted 22 wins and a .906. He’s stayed productive in North American pros, with a collective .905 across 114 career AHL games, and a .902 in 29 NHL games, over the last four seasons.
With Wedgewood moved out, Annunen should have a clear path to Nashville’s backup role behind Saros. Starting minutes will be hard to come by – Saros has a .912 in 20 games this season – but Annunen should offer far more upside than career depth-goaltender Wedgewood. Nashville will hope to bank on that upside, while Colorado hopes a greater veteran presence can right their ship – sensible approaches for the teams that respectively rank seventh and fourth in the Central Division.
interesting
“Oh crap, we traded away our elite goaltending prospect and Saros isn’t carrying the team anymore.”
So they trade their established NHL backup goalie for this guy and a pick? To Colorado, which was willing to give him up even though they are getting worse goaltending than Nashville?
Saros is not the problem in Nashville.
Saros is not the problem, no, but there have definitely been years where he’s topped the league in save% and carried worse Preds teams.
Previous Preds teams could at least score at a moderate level, not 32nd in the league.
As someone else said, Saros is not the problem in Nashville. The Predators are 30th in the NHL in goals scored and 32nd in goals per game.
Odd trade since neither goalie is playing well if we’re being candid here. But maybe a change in environment may help for them, who knows.
As they say, just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Low risk move for Nashville with some potential reward. It’s a testament to how dire the situation is in Colorado that they consider this to be an upgrade over the prospect they invested so many years into. If they can’t keep Rantanen, the window slams shut.
Hard for anyone to play worse than Wedgewood did this season, but I’m not sure anyone knows what Trotz is doing at this point. Just fire Bruno already.
You and I have argued lightly before about whether the Preds should tear it down or rebuild on the fly. I admit that even though I’d been on Team Teardown, I did not hate what Trotz did in the off-season. But I sure hate it now!
I know they’ve been unlucky, but their shot quality is poor, their high danger shot prevention has been lousy, and you don’t need advance stats to know it. Maybe it’s Brunette, made worse by Saros’ typical early season mediocrity. But… woof! I don’t konw where they go from here.
I liked Trotz’ off-season, but basically giving away Fabbro and Tomasino for nothing and not pulling the plug on Brunette is not a good look.
No, you LOVED Trotz’ moves this summer and trashed a HOF general manager in the process. Now you want Bruno fired even though the roster Trotz has given him lacks size and speed with no first or as it turns out, second line center. Success in hockey is not easily purchased and writing checks doesn’t make one a genius.
Wow, what a blithering retort.
1: Poile was a mediocre GM who produced mediocre results during his long career as a GM. The statistics back that up.
2: Yes, I (as well as many others) loved Trotz’ off-season moves.
3: I have never liked bringing in Bruno as the head coach and have never once posted otherwise. Bill Zito moved on from him for a reason.
And I should add that I did not like most of what Trotz did during the 2023/24 off-season and said so often, especially the Duchene buyout.