Your team just really needs to get used to the fact that unless it has the financial capacity to keep the amazing talent it cultivates once they leave their ELCs and stop being RFAs, they're going to keep giving away their talent.
The reality is that at the end of the day other teams offer a comparable environment to Nashville and can pay more. That leaves Nashville at a serious disadvantage sadly.
The fact is that our team is now to the point where they plan to spend to the cap. They offered Suter 13y/90m. That's 8m short of what the Wild offered and Suter had told Poile he would give the Preds the last crack at countering any offer. In the end he didn't even give Poile that luxury. Hell we're hearing today from Parise that it was Suter's idea that they both go to Minnesota!
There are really a few things at play here:
1) We're still a relatively young pro sports market. The Preds and Titans are both in the 10-15 year mark and the Preds are just now starting to mature. We're not used to making offers to keep our top talent because in the past we've never been able to afford to do so. It was different this time and so this is the first taste we've ever had of having a player who just flat out doesn't want to be here.
2) It seems there was an element of lying by Suter in all of this which makes the situation even worse as a fan. Those of us who follow the team closely know what was supposedly said by Suter in private. We also know what he said in public around the All Star break. Our organization did everything Suter said it needed to and he still left. So the hardest part of all of this is that at the end of the day we have been left with no Suter and no assets for Suter.
3) As pointed out earlier, the current plan is to finally spend to cap or somewhere near cap. It's time to get out of the cellar. But losing a guy like Suter, and potentially Weber, can quickly set this team back 5 years. Setting a team like this back 5 years can quickly make spending to cap no longer plausible as this is not really a prime hockey market. Most of the fans get drawn to the arena by the culture of winning. It broods interest in the sport. But this is really a football market and it's pretty easy for a lot of people to just walk away from the whole thing if things go bad for 2 or 3+ years in a row. I'll keep buying my season tickets but I'm not the fan they're trying to keep. It's the fringe fan that has shown up over the last season or two.
I know it's hard for some of you guys to relate to since you're from traditional hockey markets. It's just different here. When it comes to hockey the fan base is very shaky. I think the firm base has grown to a point where we aren't really at risk of losing the club any time soon but keeping the fringe fans and businesses around who allow us to have the extra money to sign our home grown talent and bring in better talent via free agency is the variable.