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Nashville Predators
2026-27 season preview

Nashville Predators

41-34-991 pts22nd of 32
Goals for
3.12
20th in the league
Goals against
3.25
26th in the league
Power play
23.1%
10th in the league

Kodo projects the Nashville Predators for 41-34-9 (91 pts), carried by 5th-ranked penalty kill. In a categories league, the fantasy value runs through Filip Forsberg and Roman Josi on PP1. 2 core skaters project to rise and 5 to slip. Juuse Saros is the projected starter.

Your categories · using the preset above
Breakout watch
projects 51.5 pts on a rising role (L2·PP1)
Regression watch
finishing/on-ice luck ran hot — expect some pullback off last year's line
Buy-low
underlying shot/chance rates outran the results — a discount vs name value
The crease
Juuse Saros
Juuse Saros projects the crease (~57 starts)
Sleeper
projects 7 pts
Contents · 12 sections

Latest

lines, injuries and roster moves 1 / 12
TransactionSteven Stamkos added to NSH roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionRyan O'Reilly added to NSH roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionRoss Colton added to NSH roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionLuke Evangelista added to NSH roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionJuuse Saros added to NSH roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
Each item names its source. Kodo's own projected line changes are not reported here.
Carried into camp
Nils HoglanderProbable for start of season — Undisclosed · CBS2026-05-06 · 106d
Nicolas HagueProbable for start of season — Upper Body · CBS2026-04-16 · 126d
Jonathan MarchessaultProbable for start of season — Undisclosed · CBS2026-04-16 · 126d
Reported more than 30 days ago, so listed as a standing condition rather than news. The date is the one the injury feed carries, which is the game the player was expected to miss — not the day anything was last checked.

Where this team sits

last season vs projection 2 / 12
25-2626-27Change
Goals for2.9520th3.1216th+0.17▲4
Goals against3.2626th3.2527th-0.01▼1
Power play23.110th20.1218th-2.98▼8
Penalty kill81.75th79.5018th-2.20▼13
Faceoffs50.514th49.5618th-0.94▼4
Points percentage0.52422nd0.54222nd+0.018
How these projections are made
Both bars share one scale per row — the wider of the two league ranges — so a bar that moves is a number that moved. The grey tick is that column's league average, and the arrow is the change in league rank. Goals-against and expected-goals-against rank ascending, so low is good and green always means improved.
Goals for, goals against and points percentage come from the roster: summed player projections over the real 26-27 schedule, last season's expected goals against regressed toward the league and adjusted for projected goaltending, and a game-by-game simulation of that schedule.
The special teams are projected from how much each number actually carries over year to year, measured across 298 team-season pairs going back to 2010-11. The power play uses one prior season shrunk 0.36; the penalty kill uses three, weighted .5/.3/.2 and shrunk 0.38. Special teams barely persist, so a league-worst penalty kill is mostly bad luck and comes most of the way back, while the faceoff dot is a repeatable team skill. How far a club moves depends on how far from the mean it started: Vancouver sits near league average on both the power play and the faceoff dot and barely shifts, while Edmonton's 30.6% power play comes back to the middle and this penalty kill, worst in the league, is the biggest riser of all 32.
The penalty kill averages three seasons because one measures it so badly. Split a single season's spread into ability and sampling noise — a kill rate is a binomial over about 250 opportunities, so the noise is known rather than guessed — and only 33% of the gap between clubs is real. Divide the year-over-year correlation by that and the ability underneath comes out near 1.0: penalty killing is almost perfectly persistent and merely hard to see in one season. The cure for a noisy measurement is more of it, and three seasons beat one by 4.3% out of sample. Because averaging reorders clubs, that row's rank is a real forecast; the rows marked = are single-season regressions, which compress the values but keep them in order, so their rank is last season's by construction and only the value is a prediction.
A roster-aware faceoff model was built and rejected on the evidence. Draw counts are not stored, but they can be recovered exactly from the per-game percentages, and with real draws a club's number reconstructs from its own centres. It still does not predict better: given a club's first half to learn from and even handed the second half's draw distribution, it scored 2.24 against the plain regression's 2.26 across 32 clubs, and the best blend of the two puts almost no weight on it. A team's faceoff percentage already carries who takes its draws. Expected goals has no team projection at all, so that row shows last season alone.

How last season went

in quarters — where the season was won and lost 3 / 12
They finished stronger than they started+22 points of win percentage between the first quarter and the last.
Oct–Nov10-0911-16
30%6-14
for2.45
against3.50
Nov–Jan11-2201-03
62%13-8
for3.29
against3.14
Jan–Mar01-0603-03
40%8-12
for3.05
against3.70
Mar–Apr03-0504-16
52%11-10
for3.24
against2.81
Why the shape matters more than the total
Every rate on the board above is a season average, and an average cannot tell a club that was good all year from one that was excellent for six weeks and ordinary after. Those are different teams to draft into: the second one probably changed — an injury, a call-up, a coach — and whatever changed is likelier to still be true in October than the average is.
Read it against the roster movement section. A club that faded and then lost its best defenceman is not going to bounce; one that faded while carrying injuries and got everybody back is a different case entirely.
Quarters are equal shares of the games actually played, so the windows differ slightly by club depending on scheduling.

Schedule shape

games per week and per month, light nights, back-to-backs 4 / 12
Light nights
17.9%32nd
15 of 84 games
Four-game weeks
711th
5 weeks of two or fewer
Back-to-backs
119th
roughly one backup start each
Playoff-week games
922nd
over 3 weeks · 1 back-to-back
Games per week
2026-09-28on light nights2027-04-05
Games by month
Oct*
14
Nov
13
Dec
13
Jan
17
Feb
9
Mar
13
Apr*
5
* part of a month — the season opens and closes mid-month.
Why these three and not a schedule score
They answer different formats, so combining them would hide the answer rather than give it. Four-game weeks decide weekly-lineup leagues: the same player produces a third more in a four-game week than a three-game one, and clubs differ by several such weeks across a season. Light nights decide daily leagues and streaming — a light night is one carrying no more than the league's median number of games (6 this season), so your man is a far larger share of everything available than he is on a sixteen-game Tuesday. Playoff-week games counts the last three weeks of the season excluding the final one — most head-to-head leagues have crowned a champion before the NHL finishes, and that last week is short and full of rested stars. Back-to-backs decide the crease, because a starter rarely takes both ends, so each one is roughly a start handed to the backup.
Ranks are against all 32 clubs, and the whole thing is read off the published slate — no projection is involved.

Projected lineup

lines, pairs and both special teams, with what each man projects for 5 / 12
Lineup notes
This is the lineup the club can ice on opening night, not its best-case group. A player expected to miss more than the opening month is left out and his slot goes to whoever takes it — he keeps his projection below, he is out of the lineup, not out of the season.
Projected ice time totals 298.1 of the 300 skater-minutes a game has. Power play 3.16′ on the first unit, 1.79′ on the second; the kill 2.35′, 1.67′ and 1′ across three units — all measured.Change this lineup →

Forward lines

L1
LW
Filip ForsbergG: 97th percentileA: 87th percentilePPP: 94th percentileSOG: 97th percentileHIT: 83rd percentileBLK: 40th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
71 pts · 18.0′
33G · 38A · 242SOG · 126HIT · 37BLK
C
Jonathan MarchessaultG: 77th percentileA: 69th percentilePPP: 77th percentileSOG: 81st percentileHIT: 61st percentileBLK: 2nd percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
42 pts · 16.6′
18G · 24A · 158SOG · 80HIT · 15BLK
RW
Matthew WoodG: 71st percentileA: 46th percentilePPP: 69th percentileSOG: 59th percentileHIT: 35th percentileBLK: 16th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
30 pts · 16.6′
15G · 15A · 110SOG · 51HIT · 26BLK
L2
LW
Steven StamkosG: 93rd percentileA: 69th percentilePPP: 91st percentileSOG: 86th percentileHIT: 55th percentileBLK: 35th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
54 pts · 16.6′
30G · 24A · 170SOG · 73HIT · 35BLK
C
Ryan O'ReillyG: 84th percentileA: 89th percentilePPP: 85th percentileSOG: 71st percentileHIT: 4th percentileBLK: 67th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
62 pts · 18.9′
22G · 40A · 133SOG · 17HIT · 58BLK
RW
Luke EvangelistaG: 68th percentileA: 87th percentilePPP: 78th percentileSOG: 82nd percentileHIT: 9th percentileBLK: 7th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
52 pts · 16.6′
14G · 38A · 161SOG · 24HIT · 20BLK
L3
LW
Reid SchaeferG: 37th percentileA: 13th percentilePPP: 37th percentileSOG: 2nd percentileHIT: 38th percentileBLK: 2nd percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
11 pts · 13.2′
6G · 5A · 36SOG · 55HIT · 15BLK
C
Mavrik BourqueG: 73rd percentileA: 58th percentilePPP: 58th percentileSOG: 65th percentileHIT: 47th percentileBLK: 15th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
35 pts · 15.0′
16G · 19A · 123SOG · 66HIT · 25BLK
RW
Ozzy WiesblattG: 8th percentileA: 6th percentilePPP: 17th percentileSOG: 3rd percentileHIT: 78th percentileBLK: 10th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
4 pts · 13.9′
1G · 3A · 36SOG · 114HIT · 22BLK
L4
LW
Ross ColtonG: 64th percentileA: 46th percentilePPP: 47th percentileSOG: 74th percentileHIT: 92nd percentileBLK: 29th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
28 pts · 12.5′
13G · 15A · 140SOG · 157HIT · 32BLK
C
Alexander KerfootG: 53rd percentileA: 46th percentilePPP: 42nd percentileSOG: 35th percentileHIT: 41st percentileBLK: 66th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
24 pts · 12.4′
10G · 15A · 75SOG · 59HIT · 57BLK
RW
Jack DruryG: 50th percentileA: 42nd percentilePPP: 36th percentileSOG: 49th percentileHIT: 27th percentileBLK: 56th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
22 pts · 13.1′
9G · 14A · 93SOG · 43HIT · 49BLK

Defence pairs

D1
LD
Roman JosiG: 64th percentileA: 90th percentilePPP: 91st percentileSOG: 87th percentileHIT: 16th percentileBLK: 87th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
54 pts · 23.2′
13G · 41A · 175SOG · 31HIT · 105BLK
RD
Brady SkjeiG: 39th percentileA: 64th percentilePPP: 59th percentileSOG: 63rd percentileHIT: 45th percentileBLK: 77th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
28 pts · 22.5′
7G · 22A · 119SOG · 63HIT · 83BLK
D2
LD
Nicolas HagueG: 18th percentileA: 26th percentilePPP: 6th percentileSOG: 31st percentileHIT: 70th percentileBLK: 74th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
11 pts · 18.5′
3G · 8A · 71SOG · 95HIT · 76BLK
RD
Nick PerbixG: 20th percentileA: 27th percentilePPP: 17th percentileSOG: 33rd percentileHIT: 26th percentileBLK: 81st percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
12 pts · 19.2′
3G · 9A · 73SOG · 42HIT · 90BLK
D3
LD
Adam WilsbyG: 15th percentileA: 41st percentilePPP: 25th percentileSOG: 26th percentileHIT: 19th percentileBLK: 66th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
15 pts · 15.8′
2G · 13A · 67SOG · 34HIT · 58BLK
RD
Ryan UfkoG: 13th percentileA: 13th percentilePPP: 37th percentileSOG: 0th percentileHIT: 9th percentileBLK: 28th percentileGAPPPSOGHITBLK
7 pts · 15.8′
2G · 5A · 23SOG · 23HIT · 31BLK

Special teams

Scratches & depth

Roster movement & minutes

who changed, and the minutes freed 6 / 12
In Stamkos, O'Reilly, Colton, Evangelista, Saros, Annunen, Marchessault, Drury, Forsberg, Fink, Edstrom, Bourque
Callup Lee, Reid, Edstrom, Molendyk, Kemell, Martin
Out Haula, Bunting→UFA, Blankenburg→UFA, McCarron→MIN, Svechkov→COL, Jost, Smith→CHI, Stastney→EDM
Wood12.315.1 +2.8
Wiesblatt10.211.7 +1.5
Schaefer9.611 +1.4
Marchessault16.718 +1.3
O'Reilly20.419.7 -0.7
Stamkos17.817 -0.8
Kerfoot12.811.9 -0.9
Drury14.513.2 -1.3
Biggest projected minute changes either way — a club's ice time is a fixed budget, so the departures above are what free it up. Full board →

Camp battles

contested roles, priced in points 7 / 12
Top power-play unit — quarterback5.3 pts at stake
holds it
Roman Josi
54 proj pts · 25.2′ · 3.3′ PP
vs
pushing
Brady Skjei
28 proj pts · 23.1′ · 1.3′ PP
Roman Josimodel favours the incumbentBrady Skjei
1.40 more min/game on PP1 (measured PP1 vs PP2 minutes), at the challenger's own scoring rate over a full season. Power-play gaps come from measured PP minutes last season; even-strength gaps from the role model that drives every projection on this page.

Power play

23.1% last season · who it runs through, and what is left of it 8 / 12
Conversion
23.1%
on the man advantage
PP goals
56
530 shots
Expected goals
50
+6 vs actual
Shooting
10.6%
of PP shots go in
Who it runs through · last season
PlayerPP/gmSharePPGPPAPPP/60ixGIPPFocal
Josi3.354%420246.433.263%1.3
Forsberg3.0350%1115266.28763%1.27
Stamkos3.1752%1412266.017.760%1.21
Evangelista2.2837%116175.523.152%1.12
O'Reilly2.8747%515205.175.855%1.04
Wood1.6627%4484.062.754%0.81
Marchessault2.8447%4482.727.149%0.55
Skjei1.3422%0331.641.553%0.33
What IPP, focal and ixG mean
IPP is the share of the power-play goals he was on the ice for that he got a point on. It is the direct form of “the play runs through him”: two men can take the same unit minutes while one touches the puck on every goal and the other watches from the far circle. League average on the power play is 59%. It is computed from the on-ice record of every goal, corrected for the ~18% of goals with no on-ice row and shrunk toward the positional mean for thin samples, so it cannot exceed 1.
Focal is the older, cruder version — his share of the team's power-play points over his share of its minutes. It is team-relative, so it moves when a teammate is injured; IPP does not. ixG is the expected goals from his own shots on the man advantage. Minutes are measured, not modelled.
Projected PP1Stamkos23 PPP (26 last yr)Forsberg26 PPP (26 last yr)O'Reilly18 PPP (20 last yr)Josi23 PPP (24 last yr)Evangelista13 PPP (17 last yr)
Projected PP2Marchessault13 PPP (8 last yr)Wood8 PPP (8 last yr)Skjei5 PPP (3 last yr)Colton3 PPPBourque5 PPP (5 last yr)

Hits, blocks and the rest

what a banger league is won with 9 / 12
Hits
186714th
projected, this roster · of 32
Blocks
124021st
projected, this roster · of 32
Shots
26197th
projected, this roster · of 32
Penalty minutes
76413th
projected, this roster · of 32
Faceoff wins
203821st
projected, this roster · of 32
H+B
310717th
projected, this roster · of 32
S+H+B
572611th
projected, this roster · of 32
Who supplies them
PlayerGPHits/60Blks/60PKPIMFOW+/-H+BS+H+B
Lyubushkin75974.91266.491.646+1223268
Hague D273953.75762.672.250-6171243
Colton L4·PP27315710.45321.640.12183+4189329
Forsberg L1·PP1791264.8371.280.3358-6162404
Skjei D1·PP280632.27832.723.139-7146265
Barron69642.99854.840.625-4149208
Wiesblatt L34711414.71222.650.7362-2136172
Josi D1·PP167310.851053.581.429-13136311
Martin499327450120235
Perbix D278421.23903.783.021-4132205
Stamkos L2·PP174733.66351.480.147317-17108278
Kerfoot L473594.14573.721.630245-2116191
Edstrom468511.73283.970.11260113153
Marchessault L1·PP271804.35150.520.13318-1695252
Wilsby D363341.7582.861.231+192159
Drury L475432.32492.832.128484+792184
Cullen33641833082159
Bourque L3·PP274663.68250.990.319114+391214
Hoglander52647.14141.1181+078134
Schaefer L3285514.36153.990.128070106
O'Reilly L2·PP174170.62582.42.020686-175208
Kemell32559.01183.250.822073112
What actually moves these numbers
Penalty-kill time is the strongest driver of blocks we can measure. Across 1,504 consecutive season pairs, a skater who gains a minute of shorthanded time a game adds a median 9.5 blocks over 84 games — a defenceman 16 — and the effect runs monotonically the other way too: lose a minute and it is −15.6, or −25.9 for a defenceman. The PK column is here for that reason.
But it is mostly the minutes, not the man. Shorthanded time correlates +0.52 with blocks per 60 across players and only +0.14 within the same player year to year, which says coaches pick shot-blockers for the kill more than the kill turns anyone into one. A player promoted onto PK1 gains blocks because he is on the ice for more shots, not because he changed — so price the ice time, not a breakout.
Hits run opposite to ice time. Total minutes correlate −0.57 with hits per 60, and −0.60 among forwards: the fourth line hits, the first line does not. So a rate beats a total here more than in any other category, which is what the /60 columns are for — a checker on eleven minutes at 12 hits per 60 is worth more than a first-liner at 5 on nineteen, and their season totals can look identical.
Power-play time predicts the absence of all of it — −0.43 with hits per 60, −0.47 with blocks, −0.26 with penalty minutes. The men who run a power play are not the men who supply a banger roster, which is why the two sections of this page rarely name anybody twice.
Faceoff wins are a volume category. They track draws taken far more than win rate, so the man to want is the one taking the most — normally the first-line centre and whoever takes defensive-zone draws on the kill.
Measured on 2022-23 through 2025-26, skaters with 40+ games and 200+ minutes at both ends of each pair.

Contracts and the cap

what the roster costs, and who reaches the market 10 / 12
$94.6Mcommitted · 28 of 32 on file
13reach the market after this season

Pending free agents · this summer

Ryan O'ReillyCUFA$4.50M62 pts
Ross ColtonCUFA$4.00M28 pts
Ilya LyubushkinDUFA$3.25M7 pts
Luke EvangelistaRRFA$3.00M52 pts
Nick PerbixDUFA$2.75M12 pts
Justin BarronDRFA$1.57M11 pts
Adam EdstromCRFA$0.97M3 pts
Matthew WoodRRFA$0.95M30 pts
Ryan UfkoDRFA$0.93M7 pts
Joakim KemellCRFA$0.89M11 pts
Reid SchaeferLRFA$0.89M11 pts
Ozzy WiesblattCUFA$0.81M4 pts
Adam WilsbyDRFA$0.81M15 pts

Free the summer after

Roman JosiD$9.06M54 pts
Steven StamkosC$8.00M54 pts
Nils HoglanderL$3.00M9 pts
Justus AnnunenG$1.25M
Aiden FinkR$0.95M12 pts
David EdstromC$0.91M5 pts
Tanner MolendykD$0.91M4 pts

Biggest cap hits

Roman JosiD$9.06M1y left · NMC
Filip ForsbergL$8.50M3y left · NMC
Steven StamkosC$8.00M1y left · NMC
Juuse SarosG$7.74M6y left · NMC
Brady SkjeiD$7.00M4y left · NMC
Jonathan MarchessaultC$5.50M2y left · NMC
Nicolas HagueD$5.50M2y left
Mavrik BourqueC$5.50M5y left

Cap hits from CapWages for the 28 men on file. A dash is a figure we do not have, usually a restricted free agent whose entry-level deal has lapsed, and those are left out of the committed total rather than counted as nothing.

The crease

GSAx last season, projected next 11 / 12
GSAx view
Saros
59 starts last season
GSAx / start
-0.858
lg -0.858149th
Shot quality faced
0.0767
lg 0.073185th hardest
1.10-1.414080
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-80 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
57 GS27 W (1637)0.899 SV%2.99 GAA
Annunen
23 starts last season
GSAx / start
-0.574
lg -0.858182th
Shot quality faced
0.0757
lg 0.073179th hardest
1.10-1.414182
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-82 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
27 GS13 W (817)0.903 SV%3.00 GAA
GSAx is goals saved above expected — what the shots he faced were worth, minus what he actually allowed. Shown per start, because a backup cannot out-accumulate a starter but can out-perform him on a per-night basis. Shot quality faced is expected goals per shot: higher means he was hung out to dry more often, and the percentile is where that workload ranks among goalies with 15+ starts. Rolling form is a 10-start moving average — is he playing well lately; running total is the season's accumulated damage. Per-game GSAx is too noisy to read either from directly.

Every skater

the reference table · Overall is value as a z-score against the league, so +1.00 is a standard deviation above average 12 / 12
Forwards · 22
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Filip ForsbergL1·PP1+2.1879333871.42602421263735-68162404sell-highPP1
Steven StamkosL2·PP1+1.1374302453.6230170733547-17317108278decliningsell-highPP1
Ryan O'ReillyL2·PP1+0.7674224062.2/68182133175820-168675208PP1
Jonathan MarchessaultL1·PP2+0.3471182442.3/48130158801533-161895252declining
Luke EvangelistaL2·PP1+0.2374143851.51301612420250044204ascendingPP1
Ross ColtonL4·PP2+0.1973131527.6301401573221+483189329decliningbounce-back
Mavrik BourqueL3·PP2-0.1974161935.350123662519+311491214ascending
Brady Martin-0.334991928/423011593274500120235
Matthew WoodL1·PP2-0.3466151530.3/3781110512618-17576186ice time ↑
Alexander KerfootL4-0.5773101524.42275595730-2245116191
Jack DruryL4-0.707591422.31093434928+748492184
Wyatt Cullen-1.01336915/3320776418330082159
Egor Surin-1.11326814/2820774918140067144
Ozzy WiesblattL3-1.2247134.100361142236-22136172ice time ↑
Adam Edstrom-1.3246213004085281206113153
Nils Hoglander-1.3252458.900566414180178134declining
Joakim Kemell-1.36324711/2210395518220073112
Reid SchaeferL3-1.37286511/2510365515280070106
Aiden Fink-1.43293912/261038441612006098
Ryker Lee-1.5623459/231035351310004883
David Edstrom-1.8517235/1710122495003345
Cameron Reid-1.8616145/2010132395003245
Defence · 9
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Roman JosiD1·PP1+1.3067134154.2/662301753110529-130136311PP1
Brady SkjeiD1·PP2-0.018072228.152119638339-70146265
Ilya Lyubushkin-0.4475166.600459712646+10223268
Nicolas HagueD2-0.60733811.10171957650-60171243
Justin Barron-0.74693811.20059648525-40149208
Nick PerbixD2-0.75783911.60173429021-40132205declining
Adam WilsbyD3-1.006321315.20067345831+1092159
Ryan UfkoD3-1.6020257/23102323315005477
Tanner Molendyk-1.8117134/14001019262004555
Goalies · 2
GoalieGSWLOTLSV%GAASVSAGASHOGSAxGSAx/GS
Juuse Saros57272460.8992.99147016361661.2-50.6-0.858
Justus Annunen27131230.9033.00735814790.9-13.2-0.574

Projected record and projected ice time are model estimates; ranks, lines, projections and trend signals trace to real data.