Dave Pagnotts of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio with Gord Stellick and Scott Laughlin and was asked if the Dante Fabrro move in Nashville was a sign of things to come with the Predators.
NHLRumors.com Transcirptions
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Gord Stellick: “Just mentioning early like Dante Fabbro was signed to a one-year contract by Barry Trotz, $2.5 million, and he talked about maybe making some changes or overhaul, or whatever term renovation, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it, so this might be the first little one putting him on waivers Columbus claims him.
We’ll see how it works out for him in Columbus. But I’m wondering if we think you know, last year was just coaches paying the price. It seemed coaching changes. But might we start seeing, some kind of, the first inkling of some kind of hockey trades going on, teams that really need to get their act together, and things percolating a little bit? Do you get a sense either way about that at all Dave?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah. I mean, I like the fact that the way that Trotz has handled this and the transparency in which he’s been, he’s been speaking publicly about his team. The coach, making the coaching change its an easy kind of move to make. I like the fact that he’s been trying to hold his players accountable for their rough season, the rough start to the season.
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And he’s been also vocal and open about the fact that, yeah, he has been looking, he has been looking around and making moves and teams we’ve seen some moves. Some of them have been out of necessity. Utah needing a defenseman. They go out and get Maatta from Detroit. Toronto had a surplus. They moved Liljegren and they’re probably gonna end up having to do something else with some of their guys coming back. Hakanpää coming back, and all that.
But in terms of making those hockey type moves early, I mean, Nashville is in a position, they had a decent amount of cap space before Fabbro was claimed from, from Columbus. I think they’re just over 7.2 or 7.3 right now in cap space. So they have a lot of flexibility to make an impact addition here, from a financial perspective, when you look at the cap, it’s a matter of just kind of figure out how to make that type of move asset-wise.
And nobody’s going to be helping you out with, with how you’re performing, just to try to get you back on track. Those types of deals, those hockey type of deals, are going to be difficult to make, but Nashville has given themselves a bit of an opening here from a cap side of things to make a big move.
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And we all know based on what Trotz has been saying and confirming that they’re looking so whether it’s a 2C, because I know that’s something that they’ve been looking at, trying to upgrade themselves up the middle, beyond Ryan O’Reilly, I think that’d be a priority for them if they could pull something off.
It’s just a matter of figuring out how to how to make that, that work asset-wise. I think Nashville would like to do it. We’ll see how creative Trotz can get now that he freed up a little bit of that space, a guy has actually been available for the last couple of years.
He’s always popped up in trade discussions, from from the Preds side of things, he gets to move on and start a new chapter in his career. Nashville, with the extra cash space, let’s see if they get a little bit more creative and let’s see what type of deal they can potentially pull off here because cap space is gold for a lot of teams.
Nashville is in a great position financially.
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