I
have been a hockey fan for well over twenty years. My love for the game was
planted and fostered by growing up during a dominant period in perhaps the most
hockey rich market in the United States. We love hockey in Michigan and we love
our 11-time Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings. Growing up in Michigan in
the 90s, it was pretty much impossible to avoid becoming a hockey fan. It’s
with that background that I sit here watching game four of the Stanley Cup
Final and wonder how the hell Nashville hockey became such a huge thing.
Let’s
begin with a very brief history lessons. The Predators came to be as an
expansion franchise in 1998. As a reward for their birth they were put in the
same division as one of the greatest teams in NHL history (cheap plug for those
late 90s Red Wings). They did what most expansion teams do in their first few
years, they lost…a lot. The team routinely finished near the bottom of the
Western Conference standings until breaking through to make the playoffs in
2004.
From
2004-2016, the team became a regular, if unspectacular participant in the
Western Conference playoffs, never advancing out of the second round. Though
this time did see them beat the Wings in round one, prompting me to take the picture
below as punishment for losing a bet.
All
of that mediocrity changed this season where the Preds find themselves just
three wins from lifting the Cup at the time of this writing.
On
the surface, the Predators seemed to be just the next step in the NHL’s crazy
90s expansion into markets that didn’t give a shit about hockey. Cities like
Phoenix, Miami, Tampa, San Jose, and a few more warm weather locales found
themselves proud owners of franchises throughout the decade. Most of this
expansion was probably spurred by the popularity of the Los Angeles Kings in
the early 90s as evidence that hockey can work in the sunshine. Of course the
Kings had the greatest player in league history as a massive marketing chip, so
that probably helped a little.
I’m
sure a large number of people were wondering if hockey could work in the
country music capital of the world when the Preds were announced. I’m sure the
same people scratched their heads as the team held hockey 101 during games to
teach the fans the most basic rules of the game. Then something happened,
Nashville became a crazy passionate hockey market without having a super
marketable player or ever being a serious Cup contender. People who didn’t know
what a blue line or a one timer were years before were now nutso for their
team. So why did hockey take off in Nashville the way it never did in Phoenix
or the Carolinas?
A
friend of mine who lives in Nashville, and is an ultra-annoying Preds fan,
gives some of the credit to northern expats who have found their way from
places like Minnesota and Michigan to Nashville over the years. While I’m sure
this has something to do with it, it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are
plenty of Michiganders in Arizona and no one gives a shit about the Coyotes. It
can’t simply be a minority of out of towners making all that damn noise.
Could
the passion of Nashville’s fanbase be a myth or an overreaction to a team making
their first run at the Cup? This is a perfectly valid question, but I think the
Cup run this year has simply shone a national spotlight on a hockey market that
was already well established. I went to a Wings game in Nashville several years
ago, long before this run was a reality, and I was floored by the fans at that
game. I swaggered in sporting my winged wheel, fully expecting the Wings fans
to outnumber the home town supporters. I have never been more mistaken in my
life. That place was loud and rockin’ and full force for their Preds. Those
fans have been loud as hell for years.
How
about all those celebrities in the stands? Nashville is the country music
capital of the world and those singers have miraculously taken to hockey like
it was a can of shitty beer or a pickup truck. When I think country music,
hockey is definitely the first thing that comes to mind…NOT (I’m in a very 90s
state of mind right now). At any game you can find some country superstar in
the stands and it seems they have an endless supply of Grammy winners eager to
sing the national anthem. Carrie Underwood is at every game and loves hockey so
much, she married it! (Good for you, Mike Fisher). Dierks Bentley has been a long
time season ticket holder. Aussie supercouple Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman are
often clad in ugly yellow and rooting for the home team. Having such a visual
celebrity fanbase is a sure fire way to drum up support for your team.
All
of this stuff definitely played a hand in the ascension of hockey in Nashville,
but the fire and passion the fans show runs much deeper than all that.
Celebrities and random success don’t breed the kind of love you find at any
given Preds game. This was not an example of a team coming to a community
hungry for a hockey team, they had to learn the sport like a bunch of children.
No, this was an example of something odd and unique (two word that could easily
be used to describe hockey in Tennessee before 1998) coming to a place that
values eccentricity and was ready to love something other than honky-tonks. It didn’t
matter that the Preds were something they knew nothing about, they were
Nashville’s and that was all that mattered. There is something beautiful in
seeing the first generation of a fanbase, the people who had to learn what hockey
was so future generations could have an established market.
I
used to hate the Preds, mostly because they were division rivals of my Wings,
but I have cooled on them since Detroit moved to the Eastern Conference. I am
rooting for them now – mostly because fuck the Penguins – and I hope they can
get it done for their fans. Nashville will never be Toronto, Montreal, or
Detroit, but they have blown away all the other southern expansions teams in
terms of fan passion and a Cup would be a perfect reward for that love. Fans
who are this yahoo over a team that has never won so much as a division title
deserve a winner.
And
fuck the Penguins, fuck them for all eternity.
