Subban, Josi remain focused on winning Cup with Predators

NASHVILLE -- P.K. Subban knows the Nashville Predators are not guaranteed a berth in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, not after the San Jose Sharks acquired Erik Karlsson to make a strong team even stronger in the already deep Western Conference.

"I actually believe that you've got to come in uncomfortable," Subban said Thursday about competition in training camp. "Everybody's spot is up for grabs. I don't care if you're on a long-term contract or a short-term contract, that's got to be your attitude coming in. ... When you have guys who come into camp complacent and you walk through camp, I've been in the League long enough to know that you can't do that."
With Subban, Roman Josi, Ryan Ellis and Mattias Ekholm, many believe the Predators have had the best top-four defenseman group in the NHL the past two seasons. The debate intensified Thursday, though, when the Sharks got Karlsson in a trade from the Ottawa Senators. San Jose now has a top four of Karlsson, Brent Burns, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Joakim Ryan.
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Karlsson won the Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the NHL in 2012 and 2015, and Burns won it in 2017. Subban won the award in 2013, and he and Josi each finished in the top seven in voting last season.

But after losing in six games to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2017 Stanley Cup Final and being eliminated in seven games in the Western Conference Second Round by the Winnipeg Jets last season, when they won the Presidents' Trophy with 117 points, the Predators' focus is on winning the Cup, Josi said, not on having the best defenseman group.
"I think every year you go into the season the goal is to win the Stanley Cup, and I truly believe we have the team to do that," Josi said Saturday. "But at the same time, we also know it's such a tough season. We're playing in a great conference. I mean, every team in the League, it's such a tough league. You've got to make it in the playoffs first, and that's really hard. That's going to be the first step, but the end goal is definitely the Stanley Cup."
Josi said he likes that not much changed with the Predators roster this offseason.
"I think getting another chance with pretty much the same team," Josi said. "Obviously, we've got a couple guys like [defenseman Dan Hamhuis] and a couple additions, but we have a lot of the same guys coming back. Like we've said before, I think we had a really good regular season. It obviously didn't work out the way we wanted, but we've got a great group of guys and we're glad we're getting another chance with almost the same guys."

The Predators have reason to have high expectations for this season, but Subban wants to guard against being overconfident or looking past any step in the process of getting back to the playoffs.
"The motivation is to get to our goal and achieve what we want to achieve," Subban said. "Along the way, it doesn't matter who we're playing. It's about us and about our group inside the locker room. I think now we have a lot of young players on this team who when I got here were young. They might be young in age, but now they're rich in experience. We've gained a lot of experience over the last two seasons, and we're going to have to use that this year."