Arvidsson Re-signs in Nashville

The Nashville Predators came to terms with one of their remaining key restricted free agents on Saturday afternoon, re-signing Viktor Arvidsson to a new 7-year, $29.75 million deal.

The 24-year old Swede broke out in the 2017 season, scoring 31 goals and 61 points in 81 games for the Predators, vaulting all the way up to 51st overall in hockey pool scoring and 31st among all forwards.  His previous high, set the season before was 16 points in 56 games, 445th overall, so no one saw this one coming.

Getting that extra bit of scoring certainly helped the Predators, as they finished the regular season strong and then made their way all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, thanks, in part, to the 13 points he put up through the playoffs as well.

It will be very interesting to see if Arvidsson can replicate those sort of numbers in the 2018 season and it will be also quite interesting to see how high he goes in the hockey pool draft, wondering if anyone is going to take him at face value or wait and see, trying to get themselves another bargain pick.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Filip Forsberg	6.000	P.K. Subban	9.000	Pekka Rinne	7.000
Craig Smith	4.250	Roman Josi	4.000	Juuse Saros	0.693
Viktor Arvidsson	4.250	Mattias Ekholm	3.750
Nick Bonino	4.100	Alexei Emelin	3.000
Calle Jarnkrok	2.000	Ryan Ellis	2.500
Scott Hartnell	1.000	Matt Irwin	0.650
Kevin Fiala	0.863	Yannick Weber	0.650
Vladislav Kamenev	0.833	Petter Granberg	0.613
Cody McLeod	0.800
Frederick Gaudreau	0.667
Pontus Aberg	0.650
Colton Sissons	0.625
Miikka Salomaki	0.613

This new-look Predators team still has a little bit more work to do in re-signing Ryan Johansen and Austin Watson, but they still have plenty of space to work with, as the 23-man projected roster above still has about $13.7 million left in cap space.