Predators Lock Up Mavrik Bourque for Six Years After Acquiring Him from Dallas

The Nashville Predators just made it clear they didn’t bring Mavrik Bourque in to be a rental. New general manager Chris MacFarland signed the 24-year-old forward to a six-year contract with a $5.5 million cap hit, the team confirmed Saturday evening after NHL insider Elliotte Friedman broke the news.

Bourque came over from the Dallas Stars along with defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin earlier this week. Nashville gave up a 2027 second-round pick and a 2028 third-round pick for the pair. Not a huge haul, but the long-term commitment suggests MacFarland sees Bourque as a core piece going forward.

And let’s be real: the Predators need something to work. They’ve missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs two seasons running now, even after throwing serious money around in the summer of 2024. That experiment didn’t take. So now it’s MacFarland’s turn to rebuild the thing from scratch, and Bourque is one of his early bets.

Bourque was a first-round pick by Dallas back in 2020, taken 30th overall out of the QMJHL’s Shawinigan Cataractes. He spent a couple of years cooking in the AHL with the Texas Stars, where he hit 20 goals in each of his first two full seasons. That kind of production got him a cup of coffee in the NHL in 2023-24, just one game.

But last season was the real breakout. Bourque played all 82 games and put up 20 goals and 21 assists. That’s 41 points as a full-timer, which is solid middle-six production. This past season he got 11 goals and 14 assists in 73 games, so the trajectory is there.

Career numbers so far: 156 games, 31 goals, 36 assists, 67 points. He’s also got one goal in 10 playoff games. Not flashy, but consistent. And for a team that’s been searching for depth scoring, that kind of dependability matters.

The Predators haven’t announced any official press conference yet, but fans online were quick to point out that locking up a newly acquired player this fast is unusual. Usually you wait, let them play a season, see how it fits. MacFarland didn’t wait. That tells you something about how he views Bourque’s potential.

Nashville’s roster still has question marks. The blue line is aging. The goaltending situation is unsettled after Juuse Saros’s contract extension kicked in. But adding a 24-year-old forward who can score 20 goals and skate in every game is a start. Whether it’s enough to get back to the playoffs is another question entirely.