An already tough off-season for the Nashville Predators may have just gotten worse. After losing defeneman Ryan Suter to the Minnesota Wild, the Predators must now pay up, or else lose their captain and best player.
Three time All-Star and two time Norris Trophy nominee Shea Weber has signed a 14-year offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers worth more than $100 million, leaving the Predators the decision to match the hefty offer or see Weber skate in orange and black this fall.
As a restricted free agent, the good news in all of this for Nashville of course is the fact that they will be highly compensated should they indeed choose not to match the Flyers offer sheet. It is expected that the Preds would receive a total of four first-round draft picks from the Flyers, making this large pill a little easier to swallow, but not much. They won’t reap the benefits of those picks until a few years down the road and would head into the 2012-2013 scrambling to pick up the pieces left behind by the departure of the two players that have been the driving force of much of the team’s success in recent years.
