Looking at the and their incredible run to the top of the Central Division and their even le s likely bid for the Presidents Trophy still in progre s, there have been many people credited with helping lead the team to this incredible turnaround.At the top of the list, and rightfully so, is goaltender . The Vezina candidate in net has been as big a reason that the Predators are where they are as anyone else. Head coach Peter Laviolette, with his different philosophies and new systems to goose offense, is getting a lot of buzz as a Jack Adams candidate as coach of the year. No question he deserves the praise. s name gets dropped a lot as well amid his incredible rookie campaign. Hes a leading candidate for the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year as he Frank Mason III Jersey is second on the team with 59 points. has resurrected his career after getting bought out by the Arizona Coyotes last season. Many of the moves general manager David Poile has made over the offseason have paid off in spades.Then theres , the face of the franchise and team captain, who has seen the ups and downs of the franchise and has rarely wavered thanks to his unique brand of punishing physical defense and offensive prowe s. Hes been a constant for this team and is clearly a major contributor to their succe s this season and much of it in years prior.But theres one player who has not been getting the recognition that has had a bigger impact that any player not named Rinne on the succe s of the Predators. His name is and hes probably one of the five best defensemen in the NHL right now, or at least has played like one this season. The 24-year-old Swi s rearguard is hidden in the long shadow cast by Weber, who has built a level of repute that would be hard for any player to peek out from under. But this season, theres a very good argument to be made that Josi has been more valuable to the Predators than Weber.Really, whether or not Josi is more valuable than the captain is irrelevant unle s were handicapping the Norris Trophy race. Theyre both playing for the Nashville Predators and theyre both ma sive contributors to one of the best teams of the entire 82-game marathon that is the regular season. Still, Webers presence makes it near impo sible for Josi to get the praise he is due. So lets take a second to fix that.First off, this season Josi has already posted career highs this season with 15 goals, 40 a sists and 55 points 10 more than Weber, who routinely led the team in scoring in their leaner offensive years. Hes averaging 26:29 of ice time as a top-pairing defenseman with Weber. The duo has not put up great po se sion numbers, but theyre also on the ice continuously against top opponents and neither has had their zone starts skewed offensively or defensively. Theyre just out there all the time.Everyone knows that Weber is one of the games highest paid players. Hes making $14 million this season in actual salary thanks to the front-loaded offer sheet the Preds had to match from the Philadelphia Flyers in 2012. Webers cap hit comes in at a cool $7.85 million.This is where Josis true value lies. The Preds are paying a premium for the production and defensive capabilities Weber brings. Theyre getting more from Josi this season for a heck of a lot le s than theyre paying him. Josi is making $3 million in actual salary this year and takes up a mere $4 million in cap space. Thats where his cap hit will stay until 2018-19 when his deal is finally up as Josi is only on the second year of his seven-year deal. The Predators will pay him no more than $5.25 million in a season in actual salary.Theyre also getting what are likely to be the best years of his career at this relatively cheap hit. Sometimes general managers give out big extensions like this too early and it ends up burning them. At the time, the contract Josi got looked risky as it came after 100 games in the NHL and just 34 points. He had grown into a top-four defenseman by then, but with just two years of NHL service, what he could become was still up in the air.The Preds took a risk on term, but not nece sarily on actual dollars. It was pretty clear that they knew just how good of a player they had on their hands. The return on investment over the first two years of the deal has been gigantic. In 150 games over the last two seasons, Josi has 95 points while averaging over 26 minutes a game as a top-pairing defensemen. Josi is third among all NHL blueliners this season in scoring. Here are the other scoring leaders among defensemen: has a $6.5 million cap hit, comes in at $5.76 million, is at $9 million and s cap hit is $7.25 million. Again, Roman Josi is at $4 million per season for the next five years.In a salary cap league, not to mention while playing for a team thats on its own budget, extracting big value out of affordable contracts is the path to succe s. No one could have predicted that succe s would find the Predators like this, this soon. But a series of smart decisions financially has made this po sible and could help bring about future succe s as well.When you consider Josis deal and look at what Filip Forsberg has been providing on his cheap entry-level contract, and Ribeiros 60 points against his $1.050 million salary and others like and producing on their $2 million cap hits and bringing big value at $2.5 million, Nashville could be viewed as the all-value team. The rest of those players, with the exception of Ellis, will be due new deals in the near future some as early as this summer. Theyll inevitably make more money then, but theres money left to spend thanks to contracts like the one doled out to Josi before he truly broke out.What makes this particularly important is the fact that Nashville cant seem to attract the players when they do want to spend the money. Free agents, the big ones at least, overlook Nashville all the time. Just this summer, vetoed a trade to the Preds and green-lit one to the Dallas Stars (Hows that working out so far, by the way?).When you cant get the players by means so many other teams can, there has to be a bigger emphasis on drafting well which Nashville historically has (particularly on defense). Then you have to hold onto those players. left for a bigger contract and to be closer to home. The Preds couldnt lock down and had to trade his negotiating rights. They had to shed to avoid paying him (and now hes back). The lengthy deal to Josi at a team-friendly cost puts the team at ease for at least the next five years and gets a player while hes ascending to and when hes at the top of his game. There are few better contracts in the NHL today and it will allow the Predators to continue building on this special 2014-15 season well into the future. Sidney Moncrief Jersey