Music City Blues: Nashville's Weber to Sign with Philly

                                  Shea Weber looks to be leaving Nashville for the Philadelphia Flyers (Christian Peterson/Getty Images)

The off-season has been less than kind to the Nashville Predators.

It started with the fiasco that was the Ryan Suter/Zach Parise contract hunt. After multiple teams scrambled for cash to sign the duo, they ended up in Minnesota. Consequently, the Nashville Predators lost one of their best defenseman.

Things didn't get much better for the Predators; Nashville then proceeded to lose top-forward Jordin Tootoo. To rub salt in the off-season wounds, Tootoo was signed by Nashville's Central Division rival, the Detroit Red Wings. And while Detroit fans tried to decide if they could ever cheer for the player they've loved to hate, Nashville was stuck trying to find something positive from their off-season.

Haha. It gets better. And by better, I mean worse.

Because now, it's their captain that's packing his bags.

Defenseman and captain Shea Weber signed a $110 million contract over 14 seasons with Philadelphia. Reports from Yahoo! Sports and the New York Times have indicated that Nashville has been interested in signing Shea Weber (a restricted free-agent)...at least they were before the Philadelphia offer. I mean, yeah, who wouldn't?

General Manager David Poile made the following statement two weeks ago, in regards to signing Shea Weber: "He's the captain of our team, I want to build our team around him. He has been terrific in the captain's role, as a player, I hope he will re sign with us" (July 4, The Tennessean). While that's all well and good for Poile and the Predators, this off-season has shown us that simply being a captain doesn't mean that the team will automatically lock-down a player.

It didn't happen for New Jersey with Parise, and frankly, it won't happen with Nashville for Weber.

There is no doubt that the Predators will be in trouble without Weber. As Yahoo! Sports reminded us, Weber would already be without his defensive partner Ryan Suter...and without Jordin Tootoo at forward.

The loss of Shea Weber would make a re-building year even harder for the Music City.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------







New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/sports/hockey/shea-weber-of-predators-is-offered-100-million-by-philadelphia-flyers-reports-say.html 


Yahoo! Sports: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/shea-weber-offer-sheet-aftermath-nashville-defining-moment-164417806--nhl.html