During David Poile’s final five years as general manager of the Nashville Predators, he claimed just two players off waivers during the season: Luca Sbisa in January 2021 and Phillip Di Giuseppe in January 2019.
But under new general manager Barry Trotz, the team has claimed two players off waivers in less than a month, adding Sammy Fagemo on October 2nd and Liam Foudy last week.
“For me, it’s some free looks at guys,” Barry Trotz tells me during morning skate on Tuesday. “We probably wouldn’t have been able to do that previously. But with some injuries to guys, that allowed us an opportunity.”
Injuries to Luke Schenn (out four to six weeks with a lower body injury) and Cody Glass (out 7 to 10 days with a knee injury) may have been part of the reason for poking around on the waiver wire.
But Trotz also tells me there’s a larger scheme at play here.
First, there’s the strategy of under signing during free agency, allowing more pickups during the season while staying under the 50-contract maximum.
“In the past, the Preds were a deeper team… and they signed a lot of that depth, including some older players. But I didn’t do that, I under signed for a reason. I wanted a path for our young guys, but also for opportunities like the two pickups that we made”
Nashville began the season with 44 players under contract in both Nashville and Milwaukee. This left Barry Trotz room to make moves during the season, including adding players via waivers. Trotz tells me that was the plan all along.
“I think you always look at [waivers] every year,” Trotz says. “David [Poile] and the staff he had here, they looked at the waiver wire daily. Sometimes you don’t have an opportunity to pick up a guy… you only have so many roster spots. Some years you sign guys, and then have only one or two roster spots open because you can only go to 50. But I like under signing.”
With the flexibility of four more contract slots this season, Trotz left the door open for more claims to come.
“We looks at the names every day,” he told me.
Fagemo, Foudy add skill and speed
The other factor in Trotz’s waiver strategy is the type of players one usually finds there.
Samuel Fagemo and Liam Foudy are just two of the many young, skilled players that, for whatever reason, found themselves “stuck in a rut” on their old teams.
“It’s low risk for us,” Trotz says of the decision to make those claims.
“You can get a really good look at [the player], and see if they fit. See if they’re better than some of the guys that you have. Then you get to know them a little bit better, and if they fit, then it’s like free draft choice for you. And if they don’t, then you put them back on waivers.”
Trotz readily admits that when Schenn and Glass return to action, they will have some roster decisions to make. If players like Fagemo and Foudy prove they are worth sticking around, it may mean shuffling other roster players around.
Like, for example, if they like Fagemo or Foudy better than Philip Tomasino, he would be the odd-man out, as a waivers exempt player.
“I’m always looking to improve the skill,” Trotz tells me. “Or if I can or improve scoring or if I can improve speed. And in [Sammy Fagemo’s] case, obviously he’s been a goal scorer, he’s put up pretty good points, known as more of a skill guy. So that was a swing there. And then with Foudy, he’s got blazing speed, he really does. But both of them have not been able to find the consistency to stay on their respective rosters.”
Trotz’s swing on Fagemo, at least initially, looks like a good one. Fagemo scored a power play in his first game for the Preds, helping show off one of his key assets: goal scoring.
“Systematically, he could be a little sharper,” head coach Andrew Brunette said of Fagemo. “But he brought the energy and he can shoot the puck, as we saw last game. He’s got offensive instincts. I thought he was really good on the power play. That unit moved the puck around extremely well and he was a big part of it.”
Trotz taking advantage of “bubble season”
Here’s yet another wrinkle with today’s waiver reality.
The COVID-19 season, aka “the Bubble Season”, limited the development of some young players around the league. Not only were there fewer NHL games being played, but every non-NHL league in North America was effectively shut down for at least a year.
This means many players barely out of their initial three-year entry level contracts are in an odd position with their organizations. They’ve started their development clocks, but haven’t had a ton of chances to find their game in the NHL.
“One of the things I’ve been sort of studying is that bubble period,” Trotz explains. “A lot of those players didn’t get to play a lot of hockey. A lot of those players got put on the team, but maybe weren’t ready. And in both cases, they were pretty high picks, first and second round picks. To me, they’re sort of extra looks. They’re both in that 22 to 23 year old range, just at the end of their first entry contract.”
“Players have to find their game a little bit. Sometimes they can’t find their game in their original organization,” Trotz said, then explaining how he wanted to take advantage of the tight spaces other teams found themselves in.
“Where they’re at right now, they were just getting squeezed out a little bit. I know [the other teams] didn’t want to lose them. So they put them on waivers. For us, it was a free look.”
So far, Trotz likes what he’s seen out of Fagemo, and he has high hopes for Foudy’s “blazing speed,” as he put it. But there’s always room for improvement.
“In Samuel’s case, he’s been able to score consistently pretty well wherever he’s played. In Liam’s case, his operating skill is the speed that he has. But I think most players, and it’s no different than Tomasino or Parssinen, they’ve got to have a secondary, sort of complementary separating skill to allow them to be consistent and to find a little bit of a role in their game.”
“With Liam, I think he’s got lots of good qualities. I’m not sure that there’s an elite secondary skill, yet. That can be goal scoring, if he gets his confidence. He was a goal scorer when he was in junior hockey, but he hasn’t really found that rhythm at the NHL. So it could be in goal scoring, it could be playmaking, it could be a number of different things.”
Naturally, both Fagemo and Foudy are happy to be in new settings.
“I think a fresh start is always nice,” Foudy said on Monday. “I was finding myself in a little bit of a rut over [in Columbus]. In and out of the lineup. A new organization, obviously they believe in me, they picked me up. Come here and get a fresh opportunity, get back to the way I know I can play, take advantage of the opportunity.”
Trotz: “People can tell we are playing differently”
Of course, there’s a lot more to managing an NHL team than checking waivers every day. You can’t change the culture in a locker room with a couple of waiver claims.
Overhauling the roster, improving the team’s skill and speed, and transforming a complacent culture in the locker room has been Trotz’s focus since he took over July 1st.
He calls it… “The Process.”
“Process over results. That’s all you have to look at,” Trotz says. “I mean, if anybody’s looking at the score of the Edmonton game, they think, ‘Wow, they must have played awful.’ We didn’t really play that awful. It was special teams and a little bit of puck luck. [The Oilers] capitalized on their chances.”
Trotz saw the Preds 6-1 loss to Edmonton last week, where they once again fell prey to the “Leon Draisaitl Playing Against Nashville” Monster, as an anomaly
Comparatively, Trotz was less than impressed with Nashville’s reverse negative the following Saturday, a 5-1 beat down of San Jose.
“I thought our worst game so far this year was against San Jose,” Trotz said. “I thought that was our worst game of the year. Statistically it was, too. But we won, because you get rewarded by sticking with it, sticking with the process. You get rewarded some nights, some nights you don’t get rewarded.”
Trotz, who attends every practice, every morning skate, every game, says he likes what he’s seeing. Perhaps more importantly, he says other people are liking what they see as well.
“It’s funny, I had some friends in town the other day, and we went for brunch,” Trotz said as our conversation concluded. “Not one person said ‘Hey, good win’… instead they all said ‘Hey, I like the way we’re playing’ and ‘I like the style that we’re playing now.'”
That, according to Trotz, is what trusting the process is all about.
“I think people can tell we are playing differently. They appreciate what we’re trying to do.”
This article sponsored by Sallis Realty Group
