The Nashville Predators traded forward Michael McCarron to the Minnesota Wild on March 3, according to The Athletic reporter Michael Russo.
According to Russo, the Predators received a 2028 second-round pick in exchange for McCarron, who will become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
McCarron, 30, has played 59 games for the Predators this season, scoring five goals and adding seven assists. In six years with Nashville, McCarron played in 292 games, most of them as fourth-line center and serving as the team’s top penalty killer.
McCarron, a 2013 first-round draft pick of the Montreal Canadiens, was traded to the Predators in January 2020 for forward Laurent Dauphin. McCarron was initially assigned to Milwaukee, but was quickly promoted to a fourth-line spot in Nashville under then-head coach John Hines. He thrived in defense-heavy deployments, became a mainstay on the penalty kill, and developed into one of the top faceoff players in the league with a career 52.8% win rate.
In December 2022, McCarron entered the NHL Player Assistance Program before returning to the Predators in January 2023. In February 2024, he signed a two-year contract extension worth $1.8 million until the 2025-26 season.
The deal makes sense for Nashville (27-25-8, 62 points), even though they are close to a playoff spot. Trotz, who announced his retirement on Feb. 2, recently said he was willing to sell his expiring contract to prepare for the future.
Alex Daugherty is a writer on The Tennessean and Predators. Contact Alex: jdaugherty@gannett.com. Follow Alex on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), @alexdaugherty1. Also check out our exclusive Predators Instagram page @tennessean_preds.
This article originally appeared in Nashville Tennessean: Predators trade Michael McCarron to Wilder for second-round pick | Report
