Saros Rewarded in Nashville

There wasn't a great deal of goaltending on this year's pool worthy free agent list, but Juuse Saros did certainly make his mark with the Nashville Predators this season, giving the team a steady backup behind Pekka Rinne, offering the number one a confident rest on his scheduled days off.  For that, the 23-year old Finn was rewarded in his new deal from restricted free agency, earning a 3-year, $4.5 million deal on Monday.

Saros appeared in 26 games for Nashville in the 2018 season and posted 11 wins and 31 points in those games, which was good enough for 44th overall in pool scoring among goalies.  Giving him some quality minutes in the season, certainly helped his confidence and I would be expecting much of the same in the 2019 season as well.

The Predators also re-signed forward Ryan Hartman to a 1-year deal on Monday, giving him $875,000, but he was more like a fringe player in the year, but he'll feature on the team update below.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Ryan Johansen	8.000	P.K. Subban	9.000	Pekka Rinne	7.000
Filip Forsberg	6.000	Roman Josi	4.000	Juuse Saros	1.500
Kyle Turris	6.000	Mattias Ekholm	3.750
Viktor Arvidsson	4.250	Ryan Ellis	2.500
Craig Smith	4.250	Matt Irwin	0.675
Nick Bonino	4.100	Yannick Weber	0.675
Calle Jarnkrok	2.000	Anthony Bitetto	0.650
Austin Watson	1.100
Eeli Tolvanen	0.894
Ryan Hartman	0.875
Kevin Fiala	0.863
Frederick Gaudreau	0.667
Zac Rinaldo	0.650
Colton Sissons	0.625

The Nashville Predators remain a strong looking team, especially on paper, working from the back end outwards, so it's really in their best interest to remain cap friendly... and they are!  Without any major glaring free agents left to sign on their side, they are still coming in with $8.3 million in cap space with this 23-man roster above.  That's a pretty good number and one they can certainly use to their advantage.  They will certainly be looked upon favourably, once the projections come out next month.