Everything that could have gone wrong seemed to go wrong last season for the Nashville Predators.
After a summer full of big-name additions, including Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, and Brady Skjei, expectations were playoffs at a minimum in Smashville.
However, those playoff hopes were crushed from the jump, thanks to a 6-11-3 start, which the Predators could never recover from. It all resulted in a 30th-place finish in the overall standings, with questions surrounding the direction of the franchise moving forward.
Filip Forsberg has been a core member of the Preds his entire career and had never experienced a season that went so poorly. The star winger recently sat down with SiriusXM NHL Network Radio at the NHLPA European Player Media Tour and opened up about what went wrong for the team in 2024-25.
“I mean, it’s hard to put your finger on why and what happened. But I think we just got off to a bad start and didn’t really recover. You know, we were winning, stringing a few games together to kind of find something, and then we just go right back and lose the same amount of games. So we just never really gained any traction on our game or in standings or anything like that,” Forsberg said.
“So it was just a frustrating season, obviously, and by the deadline a lot of injuries and a lot of trades happened. So we didn’t have much of a team, but obviously the season was lost way before that. Obviously something we all could learn from, but we definitely don’t want to experience it again,” Forsberg added.
#Smashville Filip Forsberg joined @TheFourthPeriod & @DennisTFP at the NHL European Player Media Tour
Catch the full interview on Thursday pic.twitter.com/AZW5ou3M0y
— SiriusXM NHL Network Radio (@SiriusXMNHL) August 26, 2025
Despite the team’s lack of success, Forsberg still managed to rack up 76 points (31 goals, 45 assists) in 82 games on the season.
Forsberg and the Predators enter a pivotal 2025-26 campaign
Heading into 2025-26, Filip Forsberg and the Nashville Predators must now prove that last season was an outlier, or big changes could be on the horizon.
General manager Barry Trotz was very vocal all year about his displeasure with the on-ice results in 2024-25, even mentioning the word “rebuild” on occasion. He backpedaled on his words at times, but if things don’t improve next season, then Trotz could really shake up the roster.
The Predators will be in tough in a Central division that features powerhouses in the Avalanche, Stars, and Jets. Not to mention the always competitive Wild and Blues, along with the ascending Utah Mammoth.
