Typical offseason optimism replaced this year by 'regret' and a desire to analyze every aspect of hockey operations

It is a Nashville Predators’ tradition to enter the offseason with optimism.

Regardless of the degree of disappointment following a playoff elimination or the end of the regular season, general manager David Poile accentuates the positive and gives fans reasons to feel proud of what took place and why they should eagerly anticipate the future. The players echo that message and everybody believes the best is yet to come.

Times have changed.

Wednesday, when Poile and coach Peter Laviolette conducted their 2018-19 postmortem press conference and when players cleared out their locker, the prevailing emotion was a sense of failure.

“I don’t know,” goalie Pekka Rinne said. “It just ended too quick. You always go into the playoffs with the mindset of no regrets and I feel like this year we’re going to think about it over the summer and it’s going to be a feeling of regret a little bit.”

The six-game, first-round playoff loss to the Dallas — and the sources of that defeat — jaded the franchise in a way nothing else has.

Last year’s disappointment of a second-round exit after Nashville was the NHL’s best regular season team was tempered by the fact that the Winnipeg Jets, the opponent that eliminated the Predators, had the second-best regular season record. The 2017 loss to Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Final was more than offset by all the positive memories made along the way. In 2012, Alexander Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn were used a scapegoats for a second-round meltdown against the Coyotes. Losses to Chicago and — in earlier days —– Detroit came with the begrudging acknowledgement that they simply were better teams than Nashville. And so on and so on.

Now, though, everyone has to acknowledge — among other things — a power play that was subpar from start to finish, star players who did not perform up to expectations in the postseason and an inability to ever generate momentum that would have carried the Preds through tough times.

“Everybody plays really hard on this team and everybody cares a lot,” captain Roman Josi said. “So I don’t think it was a lack of effort. I think it was being too inconsistent. The playoffs were kind of like the whole regular season. We had some good moments and then some bad moments and — I think especially in the playoffs — a good period followed up by a not good period. We were just too inconsistent.”

A year ago, Poile eagerly agreed to the players’ wishes to keep the roster largely intact and let them try again.

This year he promised a comprehensive review of the entire organization “to assess where we were off and how we can improve.” That process begins Thursday, when Poile conducts exit interviews with the players. From there, he moves on to meetings with members of the coaching staff and meetings next week with his personnel staff.

“I believe we had good reason to give this group another opportunity,” Poile said. “However, our first round loss — in six games — to Dallas, which was the better team, shows that we’ve got some areas that we need to address.

“… My job and our collective job is to address and assess everything we do with the goal of making the necessary changes to put us in a position to go further. … Clearly, what we had this season didn’t meet our expectations.”

There were attempts to look on the bright side. The fact that Nashville won the Central Division for the second straight year was mentioned repeatedly. The team’s run of five straight playoff appearances (only two other NHL teams can say the same) was referenced. It was noted that many important players are under contract for years to come and provide a solid foundation from which to work.

All of that, though, was secondary to the sense that this team missed an opportunity.

“I truly feel like we could have been better,” Rinne said. “It’s unnecessary to say because you want to leave it out there. But I feel like we weren’t at our best in the playoffs and it’s disappointing.”



