Tom Fitzgerald continues to be a frontrunner for Predators GM job

The Nashville Predators got a head start on their search for a new general manager when Barry Trotz announced his intention to step aside just before the Olympic break.

Now, the Predators are still working to land on a new candidate to take their organization into its next era.

The New Jersey Devils are one of the teams who has already found its candidate, hiring Florida Panthers assistant general manager Sunny Mehta to replace Tom Fitzgerald, who they dismissed just before the end of the regular season.

Nashville has held or will hold an interview with Fitzgerald this week, and it seems like the team has strong interest in making him their new general manager or president of hockey operations.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by NHL insider David Pagnotta to discuss the state of the search for the Predators and why Fitzgerald may be the guy in the end.

Carter Hutton: There’s only 32 jobs in the league, right? And I kind of had that same mentality when I went to Nashville, right, there’s at that point 62 jobs for goalies, and I would have played for free at that point just to get my foot in the door, and I think it’s a an organization now without a GM, they’ve been the longest team searching. What is their plan now? Where do they go? Because now it’s like you’re competing with all these other teams in the same market of a small pool of guys.

David Pagnotta: You’re right it did start a lot sooner than Toronto and Vancouver and Jersey, who found their guy, but their search started midseason and then trickled into the offseason, so a lot of teams wanted to wait before they started giving permission, you know, to reach out to some of their AGMs and some of their other executives and things like that. What we do know is that guys like Langenbrunner and White… and others have been interviewed for these positions and still seem to be in the mix, but when Tom Fitzgerald was let go in New Jersey it seemed almost immediate that the Predators wanted to talk to him about their vacancy. I don’t know if like New Jersey just brought in [Sunny] Mehta as GM, not President of Hockey Ops which is also what Fitzgerald’s title was. You’re getting conflicting information from Toronto, are they just hiring one person or are they hiring a president and GM? We haven’t had a clear indication if Nashville’s willing to put that title on, you know, whoever they bring in because it doesn’t look like they’re gonna bring in two individuals. That could obviously change, but Tom Fitzgerald seems like a definitive candidate for for Nashville’s position because they tried to pounce on that right away when he became available.

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