Leading the team in pre-season goals wasn’t enough to keep Chris Mueller with the big club…..for now.
Mueller, Gabriel Bourque, and Tyler Sloan were officially assigned to the Admirals after the Predators defeated Carolina 2-1 in overtime on a Craig Smith goal.
Roman Josi will again begin the season on the IR, but will begin with Milwaukee when healthy.
Admirals Roundtable 
ATTENTION – Ryan Miller : You are going to learn Craig Smith #15 is the real deal . You can get to Nashville,Tennessee from Madison ,Wisconsin . ( HA,HA) The road to Nashville.
Yeah, the road to Nashville…
I hope Craig Smith is everything the Preds dreamed he would be and more. But I can’t help but feel that everyone is getting a bit carried away with expectations before any meaningful games have taken place. All it took was one really good summer, and now he’s going to be the first 35 goal scorer in Preds history. Sorry. I can’t jump on that bandwagon yet. And by not jumping on it right now, I’m going to be a lot less heartbroken if his rookie campaign strangely resembles Patric Hornqvist’s rookie campaign after making the big team out of camp.
I hope that a month into the season I’ll be in a position to jump on the bandwagon. But my sample size needs to include NHL regular season games before I do.
They still have 16 forwards on there roster,and I would guess 11 are on one way deals. Even Radulov played a few games in Milwaukee. Smith will be at the Bradley center on Wednessday to sign my picture of him. The Preds are going to win the cup this year.
Ryan – You are way off base here . I have never heard anyone proclaim a 35 goal season , and indeed it took more then one good summer , Smith had two good seasons at U-Wisconsin against top college talent. So far he has proved with his desire, smarts , and skill-set you can make a NHL team out of training camp. Nobody i know is ready to put his name on the Calder trophy.
Ryan-you are my hero. As an Ads fan, super stoked to see Chris back in a Milwaukee uniform. It will be fun to see him & Bourque rekindle their on-ice magic from last year. But as a Mueller fan, I am hoping/expecting his stay here to be extremely short-lived. He deserved to make that opening day roster.
Anonymous (come on, pick a name)– I hope you are right. I’d love to be offbase here. But read some of the Nashville blogs (the good ones and the bad ones) and you may get the feeling that Smith is bigger than Jesus. He’s a special player, no doubt. Is he NHL ready? We’ll see. Again, the last time the Preds went against their favorite quote about the road to Nashville, they sent the guy to Milwaukee in November, and they took a lot of heat for it. I hope they’re right about Smith.
Would you say that Blake Geoffrion is yesterday’s news in Nashville at this point?
I think Smith is being a bit over-hyped. Yes he was a top college talent. However, traditionally it is top junior players that make an immediate impact rather than top college players. It is widely acknowledged that the Canadian Junior system better prepares players for the NHL game. This doesn’t mean that Smith won’t be great, but give him a few years.