This is not how this season was supposed to go for Cody Glass.
The 24-year-old center was riding high heading into the 2023-24 campaign. In his first full season at the NHL level last year, he amassed 35 points (14 goals, 21 assists) in 72 games with the Nashville Predators, all career highs. He was also second on the Predators in power-play goals with six, another career-high. He then went on to represent Canada at the 2023 World Championship, where he posted four assists in 10 games en route to the gold medal.
Glass signed a two-year, $5 million contract over the offseason with the expectation that he would build upon last season’s success and be able to slot in behind Ryan O’Reilly as the team’s No. 2 center. But 47 games in, his season can be summed up in one word: broken.
Are Injuries to Blame?
Glass’ young career has already been riddled with injuries and other setbacks, most notably a season-ending knee injury requiring surgery in March 2020. The hope entering the 2023-24 season was that Glass would finally be able to shake his injury-prone past and continue to earn his opportunities as a regular in the Predators lineup.
Well over halfway through the season, Glass has recorded a mere two points (one goal, one assist) in just 19 games for the Predators. He missed significant time due to two separate stints on injured reserve (IR) – first, for a knee injury and later for a shoulder injury. Still, even though his health is supposedly no longer an issue, Glass has had to watch a number of games from the press box as a healthy scratch.
Glass had been healthy-scratched for four straight games to start the month of January before making a highly-anticipated return to the lineup on Jan. 9 at Bridgestone Arena. Suffice it to say, it didn’t go well. He recorded less than 12 minutes of playing time and spent four more in the penalty box during a 5-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks.
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Glass didn’t play in the next three games, but he returned to the lineup during the team’s road trip on Jan. 18 against the Los Angeles Kings and on Jan. 20 against the Arizona Coyotes. While he did see a slight increase in ice time, he managed just two shots on goal and zero points over those two appearances before getting scratched yet again for Nashville’s home matchup against the Florida Panthers on Jan. 22.
Glass’ Second Chance
Glass made history as the first-ever draft pick in Vegas Golden Knights franchise history when he was selected No. 6 overall in the 2017 NHL Draft. He made his NHL debut with Vegas in 2019, but his knee injury brought his rookie season to an abrupt end.
Glass’ rehab process dragged on, hampered in several ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Golden Knights, a team in win-now mode, didn’t have the luxury of time to exercise patience with Glass’ recovery and development, shipped him off to Nashville in July 2021 as part of a three-way trade.
In his first season in the Nashville organization in 2021-22, Glass led the American Hockey League’s Milwaukee Admirals in points with 62 (14 goals and 48 assists in 66 games) and ranked fifth in the AHL in assists while also appearing in eight games with the Predators (one assist). That experience gave way to what looked like a major step forward in his career in 2022-23, but now, he appears to have taken perhaps an even bigger step back.
Building Confidence for Glass
Even in the games he has played with Nashville this season, Glass has looked lost and easily overpowered by the opposition. His problem isn’t a lack of talent or skill, though; he displayed plenty of both in his first two seasons with the Predators organization. Rather, his biggest hurdle to overcome this season has been a mental one.
“Finding your confidence in this game is the hardest thing to do in the world,” Predators head coach Andrew Brunette said. “Trust me – I’ve been through it, and you have to find a way. In my personal journey, I found the way is to enjoy the game. I found little parts of the game that made it fun and then I was able to find my confidence. And I’m encouraging [Cody] to do that.”
Brunette and his staff weren’t afraid to get creative in their approach to help Glass regain his confidence. They tried moving him from center to the wing to take some of the decision-making pressure off of him and allow him to simplify his game, but the move didn’t appear to have much of an impact. Brunette acknowledged that Glass’ youth should be taken into consideration when analyzing the trajectory of his season – and his career as a whole – and emphasized patience in dealing with any young player struggling to find confidence at the NHL level.
“There’s so much more attention to social media,” Brunette said. “There’s so much noise around everything. They want to get to the top of the mountain sometimes instead of kind of putting the work in to climb it, and the view’s not that spectacular unless you climb it.”
Glass’ Future with the Predators
It’s impossible not to root for Glass. He has a big heart and an even bigger smile, and he exudes positivity in the face of hardship both on and off the ice. His impressive 2022-23 campaign even earned him a nomination for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, given to the NHL player who best exemplifies the qualities of “perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.”
The Predators took a gamble on Glass by trading for him and then signing him to a two-year contract extension because they believed he could make their team better. The hard truth, though, is that he is not living up to his end of the bargain.
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Vegas gave up on Glass early, but both Brunette and general manager Barry Trotz have made it clear that Nashville does not intend to do the same. Unlike the Golden Knights, the Predators are not in win-now mode; they have time to let Glass figure it out before jettisoning him from the organization’s payroll. Still, the fact remains that he isn’t making their NHL roster better, and there are a number of prospects in Milwaukee who potentially could; therein lies the urgency of the situation.
The question now is: do the Predators risk losing Glass by exposing him to waivers to get him to the AHL, where he can receive more consistent playing time, or do they keep him on the active roster and hope he eventually rises to the occasion despite being a regular healthy scratch?
A Path Forward
One could argue that, despite any lingering trauma from last season’s Eeli Tolvanen fiasco, Nashville’s most prudent decision would be to waive Glass and take the risk of losing him. However, Trotz’s announcement on Tuesday that the Predators had opened up an NHL roster spot by reassigning waivers-exempt 22-year-old forward Juuso Pärssinen to Milwaukee makes it seem less likely – but not impossible – that the organization will choose to go this route.
Glass is still only 24 years old, and he has the size, the skill and the potential to be the elite NHL forward that the Predators believe he can be. What he lacks is confidence, and that certainly won’t improve if he continues to watch games from the press box.
The bottom line? If he is going to regain his confidence and make a legitimate case that he deserves the Predators’ 2C role, Glass needs to play more meaningful minutes – whether it’s in Nashville or Milwaukee.
