Predators Lock Down Forsberg

The Nashville Predators have locked up their featured forward, as Filip Forsberg has taken the team by storm and will do so for the foreseeable future.

On Monday morning, the team and player agreed upon a 6-year, $36 million deal, making him the highest paid forward on the team and the 3rd highest on the team, following only Shea Weber and Pekka Rinne.

Forsberg, 21, finished his second full season with the club, scoring 33 goals and 64 points in all 82 games, ranking 37th overall in pool scoring and 22nd among all forwards, setting career-highs in both goals and points in the year.

The Predators are still trending upwards and their second round loss to San Jose in the playoffs was oh so close to a berth in the Conference Finals and the inclusion of Forsberg has a lot to do with that trend continuing.  Forsberg has displayed some maturing skill, becoming a 30+ goal scorer in 2016 means that he should be well on his way to being a 40-goal scorer in the next few years, assuming the Predators continue to bring in more talent to play around him.  There's no doubt that the acquisition of Ryan Johansen was a huge help, but they are still another scoring forward away.

With Forsberg now on the books, I have the team's cap commitment up to $64.1 million for 18 players and they still have Calle Jarnkrok still to sign, as a pool worthy restricted free agent in this off-season.  How they fill the rest of the spots, still remains to be seen.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Filip Forsberg	6.000	Shea Weber	7.857	Pekka Rinne	7.000
James Neal	5.000	Roman Josi	4.000
Craig Smith	4.250	Mattias Ekholm	3.750
Ryan Johansen	4.000	Ryan Ellis	2.500
Mike Ribeiro	3.500
Mike Fisher	4.400	Barret Jackman	2.000
Colin Wilson	3.938	Anthony Bitetto	0.613
Eric Nystrom	2.500
Viktor Arvidsson	0.632
Miikka Salomaki	0.613
Austin Watson	0.575
Kevin Fiala	0.863	Jack Dougherty	0.687	Juuse Saros	0.693
Vladislav Kamenev	0.833	Alexandre Carrier	0.668	Jonas Gunnarsson	0.635
Pontus Aberg	0.781	Trevor Murphy	0.640	Marek Mazanec	0.575
Yakov Trenin	0.762	Mikko Vainonen	0.610
Justin Kirkland	0.718	Jaynen Rissling	0.607
Anthony Richard	0.668	Jonathan-Ismael Diaby	0.588
Felix Girard	0.632
Colton Sissons	0.625
Max Gortz	0.617
Cody Bass	0.613
Adam Payerl	0.575