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Predators Make Multiple Roster Moves

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The Predators recalled forwards Egor Afanasyev and Mark Jankowski from AHL Milwaukee on Monday, per a team release. Nashville also assigned winger Philip Tomasino to Milwaukee in a corresponding transaction.

The three moves give the Predators a full 23-player roster with two extra forwards in case of injuries. They’re also another puzzling step in the development of the 22-year-old Tomasino who, despite producing at a 40-point pace, has been a healthy scratch in three of the last seven games.

Nashville’s 2019 first-round pick made the team out of camp in 2021 and churned out strong rookie numbers with 11 goals and 32 points in 76 games, but he split his sophomore season evenly between the NHL and AHL. This year’s been more consistent and more fruitful on the scoresheet for Tomasino, although he still hasn’t earned the full trust of the Predators’ coaching staff despite an expected +3.4 rating that’s tied for fourth on the team.

Tomasino is still waiver-exempt, but that won’t last for long. The pending RFA only has nine NHL games remaining before he loses that status, per CapFriendly.

For now, Tomasino will look to continue tearing it up in Milwaukee, where he had 12 goals and 32 points in 38 games last season. He notched over a point per game in his first pro campaign with AHL Chicago during the shortened 2020-21 season.

Today’s news does mean that Afanasyev, who was picked one round after Tomasino in 2019, should get his first NHL look of the season. The 23-year-old leads Milwaukee in goals with 21 and has added another 21 assists for 42 points in 42 games, ranking sixth in the AHL. In a 17-game stint with the Predators last year, the first of his career, he posted one goal and a -7 rating. Like Tomasino, he is in the final year of his entry-level contract, and he’ll require waivers to head to Milwaukee starting next season.

The veteran Jankowski has a pair of NHL showings this year, both coming in early December. The 6-foot-4 29-year-old has been the only better offensive player in Milwaukee than Afanasyev, posting 15 goals and 47 points through 40 games. It’s his second consecutive season tallying over a point per game for the Admirals. A first-round pick of the Flames in 2012, Jankowski will battle for fourth-line ice time with veterans Michael McCarron and Kiefer Sherwood. He’ll be a UFA this summer after completing a one-year, one-way $775K extension.

Alexandre Carrier Will Be Game-Time Decision Wednesday

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Kings forward Quinton Byfield is expected to return Wednesday against the Predators, team editorial content manager Zach Dooley reports. The 21-year-old missed the last two games with an illness and was listed as day-to-day.

Unfortunately, underwhelming play from the rest of the squad has the Kings reeling. The team is 2-8-6 in their last 16 games and is now in a three-way tie for the two Western Conference Wild Card spots with the Blues and Predators. That makes Byfield’s return tonight a key piece of news ahead of Los Angeles’ most consequential game of the season thus far.

  • Predators defenseman Alexandre Carrier will be a game-time decision with an undisclosed injury, head coach Andrew Brunette said (via 102.5 ESPN Nashville’s Nick Kieser). Carrier, 27, skated 8:01 against the Senators on Monday before leaving the game in the second period. If he draws in, it’s projected to be a second-pairing role alongside Ryan McDonagh. A 2015 fourth-round pick, the Predators re-signed Carrier to a one-year, $2.5MM deal last summer to walk him to UFA status next July. He’s rebounding well from a difficult 2022-23 campaign, posting four goals and 10 assists in 46 games while controlling 50% of Corsi events at even strength. His ice time is up slightly, averaging 18:09 per game compared to last season’s 17:53.

Central Snapshots: Vilardi, Gustafsson, Dermott, Gurianov

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The Winnipeg Jets are expecting the return of forwards Gabriel Vilardi and David Gustafsson soon, per team reporter Mike McIntyre with The Free Press. Both players are out with lower-body injuries, with Vilardi missing the team’s last two games and optimistic he can return soon, while Gustafsson has been on injured reserve since December 30th.

Vilardi missed roughly a month-and-a-half earlier in the season with a sprained MCL. He made his return on November 30th and has since scored 11 goals and 19 points in 23 games, while averaging over 17 minutes of ice time each game. That’s a scoring pace of 67 points across 82 games, which would mark a new career high for Vilardi, topping the 23 goals and 41 points he scored in 63 games last season. Vilardi is in his first season with Winnipeg, with the 24-year-old forward serving as a focal piece of the trade that sent Pierre-Luc Dubois to the Los Angeles Kings this summer.

Gustafsson has appeared in 27 games of his own this season, scoring four points while averaging roughly nine minutes of ice time. He appeared in his 100th NHL game on December 20th, recording one assist in the Jets’ 5-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings.

Other notes from the Western Conference:

  • The Arizona Coyotes have shared that defenseman Travis Dermott will miss the team’s Saturday night game with a lower-body injury. Dermott missed 12 games earlier in the season with a hand injury, making his return on December 7th. He has just two points in the 22 games he’s played since then, adding a -8 and eight penalty minutes.
  • Nashville Predators forward Denis Gurianov has lost his waiver exemption status, with Nashville’s Saturday afternoon game marking his 10th game since being recalled on January 6th. He’s scored two points in his stint with the Predators, who have become the third NHL club that Gurianov has played for across his seven-year NHL career. The 26-year-old has totaled 289 career games and 113 points, spending six years of his career with the Dallas Stars.

Nashville Predators Sign Kevin Gravel To Two-Year Extension

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The Nashville Predators have inked defenseman Kevin Gravel to a two-year, two-way, $1.5MM contract extension. The deal will carry a $775K cap hit at the NHL level. Gravel is currently the captain of Nashville’s AHL affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals. He’s spent all season leading the AHL club, appearing in 36 games and recording six points, 13 penalty minutes, and a +6.

This year marks Gravel’s second in the Nashville organization, with the defender joining the club with a contract identical to this extension in July of 2022. He spent 23 games in the NHL lineup last year, netting one point, four penalty minutes, and a -10. It was Gravel’s first NHL action since the 2019-20 season when he appeared in three games with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Gravel has totaled just 132 career NHL games since making his debut with the Los Angeles Kings in 2015-16. He’s scored 14 points and recorded 16 penalty minutes in those outings, operating as a low-event, shutdown defender with four different NHL clubs over his career. The Kings drafted Gravel in the fifth round of the 2010 NHL Draft, taking him in the same round that yielded Zach Hyman, John Klingberg, and Brendan Gallagher. Gravel is one of 10 different players from that round to appear in at least 100 NHL games.

The Predators secure an organizational leader and long-tenured veteran in extending Gravel. The defender has accumulated 358 career AHL games, netting 93 total points. He will likely continue to serve as a focal piece of Milwaukee’s lineup through the end of his career.

Predators Sign Cole Smith To Extension

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The Predators signed forward Cole Smith to a two-year, $2MM ($1MM AAV) contract extension on Wednesday, per a team announcement. The deal begins next season and keeps Smith under contract through 2026.

Smith, 28, is playing the 2023-24 season on a one-year, league-minimum contract that was set to make him a UFA this summer. This is his first multi-year contract with Nashville after signing four consecutive one-year deals since turning pro in 2020.

The Predators’ undrafted pickup out of the University of North Dakota is transforming into a solid bottom-six presence, pacing himself for career highs with five goals and 16 points in 46 games while averaging a career-high 13:30 per game. His individual possession numbers are underwhelming (a 47.2% Corsi share at even strength), though, and his line with Colton Sissons and Yakov Trenin is near the bottom of the league in terms of generating quality scoring chances, per MoneyPuck.

That being said, Smith’s $1MM cap hit is fully buriable in the minors and would not count against the team’s salary cap if they opted to waive him. If he can round out his game, it’s a solid bet on the part of Predators GM Barry Trotz to get a 25-to-35-point scorer locked in at an affordable rate for the next pair of seasons.

Since signing with the Predators in 2020, Smith has nine goals, 24 assists, 33 points, and averages 12:43 per game through 124 contests. The extension will make him a UFA for the second time in his career at age 30 in 2026.

Nashville Predators Assign Juuso Parssinen To AHL

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Per a team announcement, the Nashville Predators have sent down forward Juuso Parssinen to their AHL affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals. Since being recalled by the Predators on November 12th of last season, Parssinen has managed to stick around for quite some time for Nashville, but will now play in the AHL for the first time in over a year.

After scoring 25 points in 45 games for the Predators last year, Parssinen has seen a real depression in his production this season, having only eight goals and 12 points in a similar amount of games played. For the first half of the season, Parssinen was garnering nearly 15 minutes of ice time a night, scoring six goals and nine points in the process. However, in his last six games played, even though he’s tallied three points, Parssinen has seen his ice time cut by nearly two minutes and has been healthy scratched altogether in the team’s most recent contest.

Seemingly fallen out of favor with head coach Andrew Brunette, Parssinen will now try his luck up in Milwaukee, a team that he has had a moderate amount of success in very limited action. Only two years removed from making his way to North America, Parssinen has only suited up in 10 games for the Admirals, all coming early last year, putting up nine points overall.

Still carrying a 22-man roster, and the adequate play of Denis Gurianov since his recall on January 6th, the team more than likely felt comfortable moving Parssinen to the AHL to regain confidence in his play. Much unlike the Predators, Parssinen will now join an Admiral team alone in first place in the AHL’s Central Division.

Predators To Field Juuse Saros Trade Offers, Still Intent On Extension

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Earlier this season, Predators general manager Barry Trotz shut down any trade rumors involving star netminder Juuse Saros, stating he had full intent to re-sign him before his contract expires in 2025. That remains the case, but TSN’s Pierre LeBrun believes Trotz may at least listen to offers he receives for the 28-year-old, he said in his latest for The Athletic.

It would, of course, take a gargantuan offer for the Predators to part with the third cog in their string of superstar netminders that links back to the days of Tomáš Vokoun in the early 2000s. LeBrun says a trade offer centered around draft picks won’t do the trick – rather, Trotz would require a young but established NHLer with first-line-caliber skills.

Predators Recall Denis Gurianov

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Denis Gurianov has been one of the top scorers in the AHL so far this season and he has been rewarded for his efforts.  The Predators announced that they have recalled the winger from AHL Milwaukee.

It has been quite the fall from grace for the 26-year-old in recent years.  He had a 20-goal campaign with Dallas in 2019-20 and looked like he’d be part of their long-term core.  However, Gurianov’s numbers had steadily dropped since then and near the trade deadline last season, the Stars moved on, sending him to Montreal in exchange for Evgenii Dadonov.

Things didn’t go much better with the Canadiens as Gurianov had just eight points in 23 games, resulting in the team declining to tender him a qualifying offer of $2.9MM, making him an unrestricted free agent last summer.

Gurianov’s market wasn’t particularly robust, resulting in him having to settle for a one-year, $850K one-way agreement.  The expectation was that he’d add a bit of offensive depth to a bottom-six group that didn’t exactly feature much firepower on paper.

However, that plan didn’t exactly pan out either.  After a tough preseason that saw him record just one assist in four games, Gurianov was waived and after clearing, was sent to the Admirals.  To his credit, he has fared quite well down there, leading the team in scoring with 30 points in 27 games, good for a tie for sixth in AHL points.  He’ll now get a chance to try to contribute to a Nashville attack that sits in the middle of the pack for goals, ranking 15th in that department.

Evening Notes: Tortorella, Askarov, Joseph, Suzdalev

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Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella made history on Friday, become the eighth man to coach in 1,500 NHL games. The milestone was reached via a matchup with the Seattle Kraken that ended in a 2-1 overtime loss for the Flyers. But despite dropping his most recent game, Tortorella has been fantastically successful for much of the rest of this season, currently boasting a 19-11-5 record that has Philadelphia ranked third in the Metropolitan Division. This comes despite Philadelphia being considered one of the league’s rebuilders entering the season, with many expecting the team to start off slow under a new general manager and a second-year head coach.

But Tortorella has pulled the Flyers above their expectations, following an interesting pattern of missing the playoffs in his first full season with a new team but driving towards the post-season in his second year. Tortorella has done the same for every club that he’s coached for, save for the Vancouver Canucks, who he only spent one season with.

Tortorella joins an exclusive list by hitting the 1,500-game mark. Only seven other head coaches have hit the mark – and, interestingly, only three coaches in the Top 10 of games played are officially retired. Four coaches on the list are currently behind NHL benches – with Tortorella joined by Florida’s Paul Maurice, New Jersey’s Lindy Ruff, and New York’s Peter Laviolette. The list also features Barry Trotz, who is taking a break from coaching to serve as the Nashville Predators general manager, and Joel Quenneville and Darryl Sutter, who are both coaching free agents with differing levels of optimism around if they may coach again in the future.

Other notes from around the league:

  • The Nashville Predators have sent top goalie prospect Yaroslav Askarov to the minor leagues. Askarov played in two games while with the Predators roster, saving 33 of a possible 35 shots. Askarov has also played in 15 AHL games this season, setting an 8-6-1 record and .908 save percentage.
  • Pierre-Olivier Joseph is set to miss the Penguins’ Sunday night matchup against the New York Islanders, continuing to sit out with illness. Joseph’s last game was on December 16th. He’s played in eight NHL games this year, recording one assist and a -3.
  • Washington Capitals 2022 second-round draft pick Alexander Suzdalev has had his WHL rights traded from the Regina Pats to the Saskatoon Blades. Regina received three players and three draft picks in return, including a first round pick in the 2026 Draft. Suzdalev scored 86 points in 66 WHL games last season, adding 10 points in seven playoff games. But he’s since returned to Sweden, playing in 13 games and scoring three points with Mora IK of Sweden’s second league. This blockbuster WHL move could be a sign that Suzdalev is poised for a return to Canadian juniors.

Tyson Barrie Out Day-To-Day With Upper-Body Injury

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The Nashville Predators announced today that defenseman Tyson Barrie has suffered an upper-body injury and is out on a day-to-day timeline. Barrie did not play in the team’s loss last night against the Carolina Hurricanes.

It’s been a difficult season for Barrie, who has not performed up to expectations under the new regime in Nashville. The Predators have reportedly given Barrie permission to seek a trade. Seeing as the 32-year-old is a pending unrestricted free agent, Barrie’s performance this season is of heightened long-term importance to the player, so it makes sense that he would look elsewhere for a more advantageous situation in order to enter the open market on the strongest footing possible. But before he can even consider that, he’ll now need to focus on getting back to full health.

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