Matt Duchene’s buyout signifies an organizational shift under Barry Trotz

It’s the day before the first day of free agency, and in preparation we saw a few players get bought out. Blake Wheeler, Mike Reilly, and Kailer Yamamoto weren’t as much of a surprise, but the Nashville Predators buying out Matt Duchene came out of nowhere. It’ll come at a pricey cap hit of around $5.5 and $6.5 in years 2 and 3, but that far outweighs the $8 million cap hit of his contract, and more importantly, begins a change of culture in Nashville.

Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna talked about Duchene’s buyout and how it impacts the Preds on Daily Faceoff Live, along with what might happen to Duchene in free agency.

Mike McKenna: I think when you look at this really closely, it’s Barry Trotz coming in and saying “I’m going to remake this Predators in the way I want it to be”. Ryan Johansen out the door, Duchene out the door, inconsistent performers. Have they been able to play with the tenacity that’s required under Trotz over the long haul? No, they haven’t. So, they’re willing to eat a big cap, and this is going to open up a lot of space.

They’ve got cap room to play with even though they’re going to have to deal with Duchene’s contract on the books. This gives Trotz a bit of flexibility, and it’s going to give him a chance to remake it the way he wants. We all expected Wheeler, Yamamoto is not a big surprise, but this is really a big swing from an organization we haven’t seen a lot of this lately from in Nashville, and honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised at all. I always looked at that deal with Duchene and went “Eh, it’s a lot of money, I don’t know” and here we go, three years left and it was bought out and now he’s going to be a free agent.

Frank Seravalli: Yeah, the key buzzword for the Predators under Trotz: culture. He wants really good people in that organization, and not to cast dispersions on Duchene or Johansen, it felt like with both of those players in addition to Yaroslav Askarov, depending on who you asked around the league, all three of those guys had still some growing up to do that perhaps the Nashville Predators said “You know what, no more time for that, this is the NHL, some of you guys have been in it for a while, got to be better than what you’ve been”.

Mike McKenna: Maturity is the word really. You can see those firsthand sometimes. I’m curious with Askarov, that’s still a major prospect for them, a #11 overall pick for the Predators. If he’s being dangled, you can tell that Trotz is really serious about creating that right culture.

Frank Seravalli: Yeah and look, here’s the question now: where would Matt Duchene land? I think maybe it was a little bit either for Ryan Johansen to move at $8 million because you know that he only had two seasons left when it’s three for Duchene that presented maybe an obstacle that the Preds couldn’t overcome. And at some point too, you back yourself into a corner retaining salary with so many different players. Clearly if he hits the buyout window then he was available for the last number of days and weeks from the Preds, would you sign Matt Duchene?

Mike McKenna: Duchene, I don’t know, it’d make me nervous. Even at a low dollar figure, I don’t know if you’re going to get the effort on a consistent basis that’s necessary to make it sing. You do wonder now about Nashville. They’ve got to backfill that center ice position, so now that opens up their lexicon of what Trotz may do. This just threw a wrench into everything.

You can watch the full episode here…