Nashville Predators: Top 3 players they need to trade

Mikael Granlund

Cap hit: $5.75 million

The Nashville Predators are reportedly shopping Mikael Granlund around the league. They acquired him at the 2019 trade deadline in a one-for-one trade for Kevin Fiala. To say this trade hasn’t worked out for the Predators would be an understatement. Fiala has outproduced Granlund since the trade and the latter has never really been a good fit in Nashville.

Granlund’s certainly not helping his trade value with his struggles, as he only has 17 points in 42 games. That’s a long fall from his past, as he had three consecutive 50 point seasons from 2016-17 through 2018-19. Also, Granlund was just one point away from having six straight seasons with at least 40 points from 2013-14 through 2018-19.

One big change in his production has been on the power play. Granlund was a consistent producer on the man advantage with the Minnesota Wild, as he put up 70 PP points in 461 games in The State of Hockey. In Nashville, that’s fallen to four power play points in 58 games.

His cap hit isn’t going to make it easy to trade him, but if the Predators are willing to retain salary, he’d be far more attractive with a cap hit of under $3 million. There aren’t that many good rental forwards this season, so Granlund could be traded despite his pedestrian numbers. He’s not far removed from having a lot of success on the power play, so maybe teams will be interested in him and hope he can get back to producing.