How valuable was Brady Martin’s NHL stint to his development?

The Nashville Predators sent forward prospect Brady Martin back to the Soo Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League on Wednesday, giving the 2025 No. 5 overall pick another season in junior before making the leap to the professional ranks full time.

Martin played in three of the Predators’ first seven games of the 2025-26 season, recording one assist and averaging 11:25 of ice time.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss Martin’s early impact and what it means for his development.

Tyler Yaremchuk: This story pops up every year, where a high-end prospect impresses everyone in training camp, then cracks the roster. It’s a couple of games, then all of a sudden, it’s not the preseason anymore and they don’t look as noticeable.

It raises this question to me: What’s more valuable to these prospects? Is there value to giving these guys the experience because they “earn it” in camp? Or is it better off to just go into camp with a legitimate plan?

Carter Hutton: I think there’s value, honestly, just because of the mental aspect. If you struggle at the NHL level, there’s no hiding it. I took a lot of my struggles when I was younger in the American Hockey League when there were 500 fans in a game and you could hide from national television and six different angles of a bad goal, or not open up my social media and be hammered because you’re not playing well.

For these younger players, to get that experience and go through a full training camp and understand that this is the NHL … I read a quote from Martin that said, “There’s no shifts to catch your breath,” and it’s a really good point about how if you take a shift off, someone makes you pay. I think you really get exposed to that and what goes into being prepared to play in the NHL.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…