Free agency brought a fresh round of movement around the league, and a handful of former Predators found new homes almost immediately.
Nashville had already done plenty of business itself, landing Mavrik Bourque, Ilya Lyubushkin and Alex Kerfoot as it looked to add depth scoring and help on defense. But while the Predators were busy, several familiar faces from recent seasons also changed jerseys.
Colton Sissons is headed to the Toronto Maple Leafs after a long run in Nashville and a brief stop with the Vegas Golden Knights. Before the trade that sent him to Vegas in the summer of 2025 as part of the Nicolas Hague deal, Sissons had logged 650 regular-season games for the Predators across 11 seasons.
He finished that stretch with 95 goals, 221 points and a +18 rating, and he never dipped below a .50 faceoff percentage in any season after his rookie year. In Toronto, he signed the biggest AAV of his career: two years at $4.25 million per.
He’ll join first overall pick Gavin McKenna as the Maple Leafs try to get back into the playoffs.
Jeremy Lauzon is staying with the Golden Knights, the team that also got him in the Hague trade. Lauzon spent a little more than three seasons in Nashville and established himself as the Predators’ top shutdown defenseman.
He set an NHL record with 383 hits in a single season and added career highs with six goals and 14 points. In Vegas, he later set a new personal best with 12 assists, then returned from injury in the playoffs and played through it.
That effort earned him a six-year, $24 million extension, a deal worth about $4 million annually.
Cole Smith also moved on, landing with the Chicago Blackhawks on a three-year, $9 million contract with a $3 million AAV. Smith’s path to the NHL was anything but straightforward.
The undrafted forward spent his first two pro seasons bouncing between the Milwaukee Admirals in the AHL and the Florida Everblades in the ECHL, with the occasional NHL appearance mixed in. Once he got a full season with Nashville, he put up four goals and 17 points, then followed that with nine goals and 23 points the next year.
He was later traded to the Golden Knights in March, where he scored two goals in the regular season and then picked up six points in the playoffs. With Chicago now in the Central Division, Predators fans will still see him around.
Erik Haula is also off to a new Western Conference home, signing a two-year, $7.2 million deal with the Los Angeles Kings at $3.6 million per year. Haula had already spent a season with Nashville in 2020-21, when he scored nine goals and 21 points.
After arriving from the New Jersey Devils in 2025, he produced his best point total in more than two seasons, finishing with 38 points in 81 games, including 14 goals and 24 assists. He also won bronze with Team Finland at the 2026 Winter Olympics alongside Predators goalie Juuse Saros.
Rather than becoming the trade chip he was originally expected to be, Haula stayed in Nashville under Barry Trotz and gave the locker room a veteran voice while the team chased a playoff return that never came. Now he’ll become the eighth different franchise on his resume.
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