These Nashville Predators, they aren’t there yet. You know it. I know it.
Chris MacFarland certainly knows it, too. Realism was a basic theme expressed by the Preds' new general manager as he sat across the table, anticipating his first season in Smashville.
It wasn't so simple, though. With the Preds, it’s never that simple. There’s still too much talent — aging talent, but talent nonetheless — on the roster to dismiss any season as a lost cause, even if only to do right by the graybeards who'll be out there giving up creaky bodies and chipped teeth for that cause.
MacFarland’s blueprints for the future won’t do much for Steven Stamkos (age 36), Ryan O’Reilly (35), Jonathan Marchessault (35) or captain Roman Josi (36). These players don’t have
time for some lengthy, painstaking rebuild.
So that’s not how this first season sets up for MacFarland.
Not yet, at least.
“My message to them,” MacFarland said of his veteran stars, “and really to our group, is ‘It’s not up to me . . . It's up to you guys. You guys are going to tell us where we're at.’”
Which means . . .
“How competitive our camp is, how we come out of the gates, how the scoreboard is going to read in the month of October is going to be very, very important to the direction of this season and future seasons,” he said.
A new season is almost here, and it finds Smashville in flux. No one can see yet how future designs for MacFarland, who has been far more deliberate than disruptive so far in his role, will apply in the short-term. But, as the GM noted, that could change quickly based on early returns.
These Predators had better be ready to answer the bell for the 2026-27 season. Fair warning for everyone in the locker room — coaching staff, players — and it’s especially pertinent given the Predators' frustrating habit of slow starts during Andrew Brunette’s tenure as coach.
In Brunette’s first three seasons, the Preds played 31 games in October and won 11. They won only five of their first 15 games to start the 2023-24 season. They lost five in a row to start out in 2024-25. Then last season, after Brunette and his players spent training camp talking about how they simply couldn’t start poorly again, guess what happened? They won only six of their first 22 games, a stretch with four losing streaks of at least three games.
For seemingly Brunette’s entire stint as coach, his teams have been faced with having to climb out of a hole in the ice they’d dug for themselves. His first team successfully did that, making the playoffs. His next two did not, though last season’s Preds fought gamely before coming up just shy of the postseason, long after Barry Trotz had announced he was stepping down as GM.
So here's MacFarland from the Colorado Avalanche, fresh and excited, like anyone who's been accustomed to working with one of the best rosters in the NHL and in a franchise window of genuinely believing each year it can win it all.
“There's typically hallmarks that I think come with that,” MacFarland said. “You have star power. You're deep in the middle of the ice. You have a top-four defense that is the envy of other people in the league. You have a good goaltender. Your special teams are . . . where they need to be based on historical information.
“If you look at our roster, I think it's fair to say that there are some very, very good pieces. But I think to say, ‘We're ready to win,’ I would be lying to you if I said I was satisfied with that part as we sit today.”
As for what that’ll mean this season, MacFarland isn’t detailing the consequences if a “very, very important” October goes the way of the past few Preds Octobers.
He's not expecting the world. He’d like to have, in his words, “A hard-to-play-against team that's gonna bite at your calves and be pesky and try to win hockey games in different ways.
“We all know that there are teams with maybe more stars than us right now, but we can still be a thorn in the side. And we can get good goaltending, and we can be good systemically. We're going to have to outwork teams and do that time and time again to have a chance to win."
Clearly, it would behoove Brunette, who’s on about his seventh of nine lives as the Predators' coach, to figure out a way to ramp up faster this preseason. It would behoove the Preds’ veteran players, especially those without trade protection in their contracts, to do the same.
The Preds' cerebral, new GM doesn’t come across as unreasonable or impatient.
But he also doesn’t come across as someone who makes idle threats.
“In Game 1 to 10 in October, they are going to decide,” MacFarland said. “Not me. Not management. Not the coaches. Our players are.”
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: For Chris MacFarland, first 10 games will be pivotal for direction of Predators | Exclusive
