Trading superstar forward Filip Forsberg was never going to be easy for Nashville Predators general manager David Poile. The 27-year-old Swede, in the last year of his contract, has a shot to pass David Legwand as the team’s all-time leading goal scorer this season, and despite missing nine games with an injury, he’s battling Matt Duchene for the team scoring lead this season. He’s in the pantheon of all-time greats in Nashville’s relatively short history as a hockey market, and he’s forever part of NHL lore — where Erat-for-Forsberg is the on-ice version of Brock-for-Broglio as a trade that ended up laughably lopsided.
That said, if the Preds were — as most pundits predicted — scraping the bottom of the Central Division and staring hopelessly at a playoff spot, flipping Forsberg for prospects and picks would be pragmatic and defensible, heartbreaking as it would be.
But what now? Sparked by Forsberg’s typically great play, Mikael Granlund’s offensive wizardry, rejuvenated efforts from Duchene and Ryan Johansen, and plenty of secondary scoring from the likes of Yakov Trenin and Tanner Jeannot — and, oh yeah, a Vezina-worthy year from Juuse Saros — the Predators are in the thick of the Central Division race, all alone in second place when the NHL combined its annual Christmas break with a COVID pause.
That makes the matter of what to do with No. 9 a stickier wicket for Poile.
Certainly, Forsberg deserves a massive deal — something to the tune of eight years and at least $8 million per season. That would take him beyond his 35th birthday, and assuming he plays out the deal at Fifth & Broad, he’d end at the top of plenty of all-time Predators leaderboards and with his number in the rafters.
It’s still a balancing act, even if it seems like a no-brainer. Both Poile and Forsberg indicated they’d not negotiate a deal once the puck dropped on the season. But of course, David Poile has said a lot of things over the years, and one doesn’t become the NHL’s all-time winningest general manager without excellent command of leverage — and without knowing when it’s time to stretch the truth. For his part, Forsberg, like all of us, wants to maximize his value in his prime years, but like all hockey players, he wants to win a Stanley Cup too. And that prize is one that has eluded Poile as well.
Forsberg would command a haul in the trade market, where 30-goal men don’t generally become available, but he’d be a rental for whoever acquires him. If Poile were really interested in getting as much as he could for his star, he would have swapped him in the summer, given that talks seemingly stalled and Poile could read the predictions that had Nashville finishing seventh in an eight-team division, just like everyone else. Given those factors, it would have made a ton of sense to acknowledge that a rebuild is underway and to do so with a dramatic, franchise-changing trade.
If the Predators continue to shock the hockey world in the back half of the season, Poile’s hands are basically tied. He has to let Forsberg finish out the year in a gold sweater and work his damnedest to sign him between the end of the season and the start of free agency — because letting him walk away for nothing, as happened with Ryan Suter a decade ago, would be a painful pill to swallow.
