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The Nashville Predators have one of the top blue lines in the NHL. Everyone knows about Shea Weber and his elite slap shot and the hockey world saw his partner Roman Josi burst onto the scene this past season with a 15 goal, 55 point season. Youngsters Seth Jones, Mattias Ekholm and Ryan Ellis round out the impressive group as the ttrio combined for 72 points in the regular season.

The common theme among all five of these players is that they have impressive offensive upside. None of them are stay-at-home blueliners in the traditional sense. Peter Laviolette likes having two-way defensemen that can jump in on the rush and finish plays.

Nashville signed a player who doesn’t fit the style of those other defenders this past summer in Anton Volchenkov. He was brought in to be the rock beside Jones on the bottom pairing. He was expecting to bring the physical and defense-only aspect to the pairing and his 20-year-old counterpart could roam the ice freely.

The experiment didn’t work out exactly as planned. Volchenkov wasn’t the most consistent No. 6 blueliner for the Preds throughout the year with 46 games played. He battled a handful of injuries and healthy scratch woes during the year which kept him sidelined for the 36 games he missed.

It looks as if Volchenkov’s time in Nashville is coming to an end.

"Our defense is coming back except Volchenkov. We may fill that in-house." – #Preds GM David Poile. This puts @HalfordPHT's report to bed. — Jeremy K. Gover (@govertime) May 30, 2015

The final spot on the blue line was a bit of a question mark for all of Nashville’s 2014-15 season. Victor Bartley performed admirably in the spot for 37 games and put up a career high 10 points, all assists.

Anthony Bitetto played seven games for the Preds as well. He played the rest of his hockey with the Milwaukee Admirals of the AHL where he had four goals and 26 assists. Both Bartley and Bitetto aren’t going to evolve into the likes of Jones or Ellis when it comes to offensive game, but they can certainly stand in as a number-six defensemen.

Cody Franson was acquired by the club prior to the trade deadline, but that was short lived and he will be hitting the market as an unrestricted free agent come July 1.

To use the words used by Poile, “fill that in-house” means that the Predators will rely on Bartley or Bitetto to be a regular NHLer. They also have 30-year-old Joe Piskula waiting in the wings as well.

There is a slight hurdle the team will have to get through to have Bitetto and Piskula on the ice as the two are restricted and unrestricted free agents respectively. Inking both players should be cheap and cost effective.

Nashville could also go after a free agent blueliner such as Andrej Sekera, Paul Martin or Johnny Oduya. There’s also no ruling out of a possible trade being made to acquire a bottom pairing d-man.

Nevertheless, the Predators blue line is a good one. Regardless of what happens over the offseason, the organization is still in good shape on defense. If the Predators do indeed to stay ‘in-house’ with their blue line this is what their pairings could look like come next season:

Josi – Weber

Ekholm – Ellis

Jones – Bartley/Bitetto