[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by irv

It surprises me some of the players they got or players that were let unprotected.

Jame Neal comes to mind first, and is one I can't figure out? I thought he fit in well with Nashville and would likely finish his career there.

Here is what I found:

"This expansion process was painful for the Nashville Predators," Poile said. "We knew it. There was no way of getting out of it. The strength of our team is at defense, so we protected four defensemen. We were only able to protect four forwards, so it didn't line up correctly for us. I tried like a lot of people did, some of them a lot more successful than I was, to make a deal with [Golden Knights GM] George [McPhee]. The price was just too high in my estimation. Whatever assets I didn't give George to retain James or any other player, I still have those assets."

So it looks like if the Preds wanted to keep Neal, then they would have had to give away some of their future picks to Vegas, and they obviously didn't want to do that. Neal is also going to be 30 soon, and a lot of forwards start declining in their early 30s, so I'm pretty sure that was one of the reasons why Nashville didn't want to give away too many picks for him.

Originally Posted by irv

He worked very well with Fiala and I personally think if Fiala and Johansen were healthy, they may have just beat Pitts?

It wouldn't have made much of a difference. Pekka Rinne was letting in so many goals and this just hurt the team a lot.