Ryan Johansen’s season-ending injury a major blow to Predators’ Stanley Cup hopes

Nashville Predators star center Ryan Johansen will miss the remainder of the 2017 NHL playoffs due to a left thigh injury suffered in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final, the team announced Friday.

Johansen needed immediate surgery Thursday after suffering the injury against the Anaheim Ducks. The Predators haven’t detailed when exactly the 24-year-old got injured, but it’s clearly serious given that he’s missing the rest of the playoffs. The recovery timetable is reportedly two to three months.

This is a major blow for the Predators, who are tied at two games apiece in their conference finals series with the Ducks. They looked like one of the most dangerous teams in the playoffs during the first two series as they eliminated the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues. Anaheim has been a tougher opponent, but Nashville still took a 2-1 series lead before the Ducks won Game 4 to tie it up.

Now the Predators don’t have their best center, and arguably their best forward, for the remainder of the playoff run. That won’t take away from a great defense and the strong work of Pekka Rinne over the past few weeks, but it’s going to be difficult for Nashville to replace Johansen.

Of all the players Nashville could lose at this point in the playoffs, Johansen was arguably atop the list. If they lost a top defensemen, there’s enough depth between P.K. Subban, Ryan Ellis, Roman Josi, and Mattias Ekholm that they could potentially weather it. Rinne has been great, but he actually got outplayed by his backup, 22-year-old Juuse Saros, during the regular season.

It’s hard to say how the Predators will fill the hole without Johansen, though. For Game 4, the three centers behind him on the depth chart were Mike Fisher, Calle Jarnkrok, and Colton Sissons. If they’re without Johansen and Fisher, who also got hurt in Game 4, then the top two centers would be Jarnkrok and Sissons.

Sissons has been a pleasant surprise this postseason with six points in 14 games, but he’s far from a top-six center in the playoffs. Fisher was terrible before his injury with zero points in 14 games this postseason. Jarnkrok hasn’t been much better with two in 13. The Predators were already overcoming middling support from their No. 2-4 centers before the injuries hit.

There are other options — maybe the team slides Colin Wilson over to center, or Craig Smith suits up again to fill a spot — but the Predators are sorely lacking a proper No. 1 center who can battle the Ryan Getzlafs and Sidney Crosbys of the world.

The other big aspect of Johansen’s injury is that it comes just before he hits restricted free agency on July 1. The assumption is that the Predators will give him a lucrative long-term extension to stay in Nashville, given that they have nearly $17 million in salary cap space, per Cap Friendly.

But with Johansen missing out on the end of the team’s playoff run, will that cost him money in negotiations? The base line has been set quite high by Johansen’s 64 points-per-game track record over the past four years. This postseason run was a chance for him to potentially push his price even higher, though, especially if he kept playing well through the Stanley Cup Final.

Now that possibility is gone, and it’ll be interesting to see how it impacts talks between the two parties. Johansen is still sure to get a big deal this offseason, most likely from Nashville, but he’s surely not thrilled with the timing of this injury for several reasons.