100 Things Predators Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

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Contents

Foreword by Mike Fisher

1. Peter Forsberg Was a Rock Star

2. Lord Stanley’s Epic Spring in Music City

3. The Great One Gave Nashville a Thrill

4. Colton Sissons Stunned the Ducks

5. The Predators’ First Superstar Arrives

6. There’s a New Sheriff in Town

7. Breaking Through the First-Round Barrier at Last

8. The Comeback That Saved Barry Trotz’s Job

9. The Preds Broke the Bank to Save a Superstar

10. Keep Your Damn Hands off My Team

11. Hammering the Hated ’Hawks and Shocking the Hockey World

12. Subban a Predator Like None Before Him

13. A Nashville Guy Saves His Hockey Team

14. Whiskey, Catfish, and a Southern-Fried Tradition

15. A Brazen Catfish Jake Braves a Foreign Building

16. A Draft Pick That Made the Arctic Circle Proud

17. Tootoo’s Biggest Milestone Came off the Ice

18. Carrie Underwood’s Husband Made Quite a Name for Himself

19. Nashville Almost Became an NBA Town

20. The Night the Preds’ Dads Ran Wild

21. The Predators and Titans Once Shared a Frosty Relationship

22. The Hardest Decision Craig Leipold Ever Made

23. Pushing the Playoff Pedal to the Metal

24. It’s a Good Thing Gnash Has Nine Lives

25. The Turris Trade Was the Perfect Fit

26. Analyzing the Legwand Legacy in Nashville

27. David Legwand Stuck It to Broadway’s Big-Money Team

28. A Memorable Marathon on Ice

29. The Preds Struck Gold in 2011

30. Taking a Chance on Barry Trotz

31. Shea Weber’s Changeup Shook the Ducks

32. Settling for Seth Jones

33. Singers Stole the Show During the 2017–18 Stanley Cup Run

34. The Predators Rolled Sevens in the Playoffs

35. A Surreal Start for Steve Sullivan

36. A Sick Farewell Party at Joe Louis Arena

37. Tom Cigarran Went from Taking It Easy to Taking Over

38. Ryan Johansen Came of Age at Just the Right Time

39. Brent Peterson Found New Purpose in Life

40. Why a Delayed Celebration Proved One of the Predators’ Biggest

41. Check Out the Fang That Formed a Logo

42. Radulov Arrived to Cheers and Left to Jeers—Twice

43. The Hockey Hall of Fame Features a Pair of Productive Preds

44. A Snarling, Snapping Dog Sparked the Predators’ Cup Run

45. The Red Wings Received an Icy First Reception in Nashville

46. Filip Forsberg Became the Mad Hatter

47. It’s Still Referred to As the Road Trip from Hell

48. Weber’s Slap Shot Was a Laser with a Black Trail

49. A Snowstorm Made Dan Ellis’s Biggest Save

50. Watson Went from Waivers to Warrior

51. Pete Weber Choked Up over Terry Crisp

52. A Double Dose of Disaster in St. Paul

53. Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge: Where Hockey Players Take the Stage

54. Infection Proved Rinne’s Biggest Opponent

55. The Night the Predators Beat Up Big Brother

56. The Predators Knocked Themselves out of the 2008 Playoffs

57. Mr. Irrelevant Made Quite an Impact

58. The Standing O Became a Nashville Statement

59. The Preds’ Franchise Opener Was a Red-Carpet Affair

60. Scott Hartnell’s Homecoming Was 10 Years in the Making

61. The Night Hockey Stopped Mattering

62. Poile Took the Road Less Traveled

63. The Rat That Sparked an Expansion Team

64. The First Playoff Party Followed a Critical Loss

65. Kariya’s Recruiting Helped Build a Juggernaut

66. We Promise It Never Snows in Nashville…Oops

67. A Predators Leprechaun Sported the Beard of Beards

68. David Poile Won’t Fall in Love with His Team

69. Dealing Dunham: The Preds’ First Blockbuster Trade

70. A Hometown Hero with a Hall of Fame Pedigree

71. They Overlooked Kimmo Timonen in More Ways Than One

72. Take a Ride Down the Honky-Tonk Highway

73. A Tiny Swede Made a Huge Leap

74. Music First Sold Hockey in Music City

75. An Afterthought Turned into an All-Star

76. The First Captain Set a High Bar

77. The Predators’ Most Hardcore Fans Showed Their Soft Side

78. Doubling Down on Leadership at the Top

79. Scott Walker Was the Predators’ Expansion Poster Boy

80. Gaudreau Was a Stanley Cup Star Without a Locker

81. Nobody Hit the Reset Button Like Playoff Colin Wilson

82. Cody McLeod Punched a Friend to Show His Loyalty

83. Backdoor Bubba Was Destined for Nashville

84. The Finns Never Fought

85. Nashville Built a Blue Line with Just One Draft

86. Plenty of Original Predators Never Saw Nashville

87. Punchers Found a Home with the Predators

88. Trading a Top Scorer for a Recovering Drug Addict

89. A Glorious Tradition of Firing Up Nashville’s Fans

90. John Scott Was Nashville’s All-Star of All-Stars

91. Bill Houlder Loved His Harley and His Pillow

92. Harry Z’s Long Wait Finally Paid Off

93. Check Out the Growth of Nashville’s Ice Age

94. Brendan Witt Made a Ferocious First Impression

95. So Many Swiss in a Single Spot

96. Make a Road Trip to See This Predators Rival

97. Barry Trotz Left a Nashville Legacy off the Ice

98. The Preds’ First Shootout Was a Real Showstopper

99. Quirks and Superstitions Welcome Here

100. The Most Beloved Pred Has Never Skated

Foreword by Mike Fisher

The trade to Nashville in 2011 actually came as a surprise to me. There were a lot of rumors swirling around because my then-team, the Ottawa Senators, was struggling. But I really didn’t think it would come to being traded. I never asked for a trade. I didn’t really think it would happen until it did. But I remember we were in Calgary on a road trip, and we’d lost like 11 games in a row. Ottawa general manager Bryan Murray called me in just before practice, and he was like, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. He told me he had traded me, and my heart just sank. It was a weird feeling. But then he said, The good news is you’re going to Nashville. I was like, Okay, that is good news. He knew that if there was anywhere I wanted to go, it was Nashville. This is what Carrie [Underwood] and I called home and where we wanted to raise our kids. She and I had been married the previous summer, so there’s a chance I probably would have signed with Nashville in a few years once my deal was done anyway—if the team had wanted me. So it couldn’t have been a better situation; I’m definitely grateful that David Poile made the trade.

I already had a home here and I spent a lot of time here. Carrie and I had been going back and forth, but it just made life easier. It was still hard to leave Ottawa because I’d spent almost 11 years up there and was close to family and friends. But Nashville felt like kind of coming home a little bit too.

We had a really good team that first year that I arrived in Nashville. I just wanted to add to what they already had. We went further that year than we ever had in the playoffs. It was pretty cool to be able to see the fans react to that and be a part of it.

We had a great playoff series against San Jose in 2016. We were kind of playing catch-up that whole series, and two of the games went to overtime. One was Game 4, which went to triple overtime. We really needed to win that game. I don’t think I’d ever cramped before in a game that I can remember, but toward the end of that game, I was just exhausted mentally and physically. The later it got, the crazier the crowd got. We were going out for the third overtime, and the fans in the Lexus Lounge just amped it up another level. It was one of those times I’ll never forget. You see everyone going crazy and the fans pulling for you, knowing how big a game it was. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to end it.

It was definitely an honor to be able to wear the C. At this level, it’s definitely special. There were other guys who were deserving too. But the fact that they looked at me that way was great. I’d played for some great captains, such as Daniel Alfredsson and Shea Weber, and I’d always tried to help them out as best I could. It was a really nice bonus. Leadership is all about the group, not just one guy. But it was very special for sure.

The whole Stanley Cup Final run was pretty cool. We struggled early in the season, and then as the season went on, we slowly got better and better. We swept the first seed, Chicago, in the playoffs, and we just kept getting better. The belief in our room was that no one could beat us.

We got to the Finals against a good Pittsburgh team that had been there before and was experienced. They played a good series and they capitalized when they needed to. We always felt like we could win. We just got some bad breaks and it wasn’t meant to be. But you look back at where the city started, and what it became in the Finals, it’s amazing. I’ll never forget the crowds and just how crazy it was downtown during the Finals. Over the years, just talking with different players, it would always come up: Can you imagine winning the Cup here and how crazy it would be down Broadway with the parade and all that stuff? We knew playing in the Finals would be crazy, but you didn’t expect it to be what it was. Those were some memories I’ll never forget.

I definitely wouldn’t have come out of retirement for any other team besides Nashville. It wouldn’t have mattered if there was a team that hadn’t lost a game all year. I wouldn’t have left my home and my family to come back.

I love everything about this city, the people, and just being a part of it all. When I decided to come back, there were a lot of emotions I revisited. There were parts of retirement that I was enjoying. There were parts of the game I missed, and I missed the guys. But thinking about the city and what we went through the previous year was so good. To experience that with the city again was hard to turn down.

Without Carrie’s support, I probably wouldn’t have come back either. She kept asking me if I wanted to return to the game, and at times, she was like, Why not? It would be so much fun. I just want to see your name on the Cup. I feel like there’s so much more to my life than winning Cups. But at the same time, I thought how cool it would be if I could help this team and the city of Nashville win!

But all the hockey accolades aside, I hope I’m remembered more for what I do off the ice and the person I am than what I do on the ice. I think that’s way more important. God’s given me a platform through the ability he gave me. I believe that. Hopefully I affected people positively wherever I’ve met them. I’ve had so many good people in my life who have helped me along the way, through good and bad times. I have such a great family. So I’ve been blessed, and hopefully I can pay that forward.

We really love being here in Nashville. Obviously there’s no better place for Carrie and what she does than here. I love it. We love it. So unless God calls us somewhere else, we love it here and we feel like Nashville is our home.

The author of this book, John Glennon, is like a Predators historian. He’s covered the team for two decades, developing relationships and collecting memories that he shares here. This book is loaded with stories about the Predators from throughout the franchise’s 20-year history. You’ll learn about the Predators’ milestone moments, the team’s most unforgettable players, loads of lively adventures involving the team, and so much more. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!

—Mike Fisher

1. Peter Forsberg Was a Rock Star

Even looking back at it more than a decade later, there is still a sense of the surreal about the day the Predators acquired Peter Forsberg in a trade with Philadelphia. The Preds were no longer considered an expansion team at that point in 2007—not after they’d put almost eight full seasons under their belts and made the playoffs the past two years. But they were still relative newcomers to the league, a team that—despite a talented roster featuring the likes of Paul Kariya, Steve Sullivan, and Jason Arnott—hadn’t even been fully embraced by its hometown yet, let alone the rest of the hockey world.

So to see Forsberg, one of the best players on the planet, wearing a Predators jersey and skating on Nashville’s home ice for the first time, was more than a little mind-blowing. I mean, Peter Forsberg came into our franchise, walked into our building, skated on our ice—and he was a rock star, Predators general manager David Poile said. For everybody—our players, our coaches, our fans, for our whole franchise—we’ve never seen anything like it. In terms of what one player could do, or the impact he could have on our team and our franchise, it was awesome.

The Predators were already well on their way to producing a franchise-best 110-point season by the time Forsberg arrived. The team’s record stood at 39–17–3 following a loss at St. Louis on the night the deal for Forsberg was consummated. But the trade for Foppa signaled that the Predators and former owner Craig Leipold had much more on their minds than a good regular-season finish. The Predators surrendered two former first-round picks—defenseman Ryan Parent and forward Scottie Upshall—as well as first- and third-round picks to acquire Forsberg from Philadelphia. It was pretty much a statement that [we were] all in, [we were] going for it, Leipold said. We had Paul Kariya, who had played with Forsberg before. We thought we had a great team that could make a lot of noise in the playoffs. He was a special player. So we brought him in.

Leipold understandably wanted Forsberg in the Nashville lineup as quickly as possible. So despite the fact that winter storms were wreaking havoc on airports around the country the night of the trade, Leipold commandeered a private jet to fly from Nashville to Philadelphia. It returned to Music City with the Preds’ new prized possession, in time for the next night’s home contest against Minnesota.

Forsberg, 33 years old at the time of the trade, brought two Stanley Cup championships, 11 years of NHL experience, 680 games, and 856 points to Nashville. A future Hockey Hall of Famer, the bearded, blue-eyed Swede also carried a presence about him that was undefinable. Everybody gravitated to him, Poile said. "He had that swagger, he had that aura, he had that it. This was Peter Forsberg. He was a little bit of a legend in terms of the success he’d had and the things he’d accomplished on the ice, and he was now playing for the Nashville Predators."

It took four games for Forsberg to record his first goal for the Predators, but the score was a memorable one. Just more than two minutes into overtime against former Central Division rival Detroit, Forsberg took a pass from Kariya and beat Chris Osgood, to the delight of a packed house in Nashville.

Forsberg made an impact on the Predators down the stretch, posting 15 points (2 goals, 13 assists) in 17 regular-season games. Nashville posted a 10–4–3 record in those contests to finish with a franchise-best 51 victories. But unfortunately for the Predators, injuries kept Forsberg from being the vintage Forsberg of years gone by. He was dealing with foot problems and a sports hernia, issues that at one point kept him out of six straight games in March. He was very banged up when we got him, so he couldn’t do the things he always did before that, former Preds associate coach Brent Peterson said. But he was a gritty competitor. He was tough, and he led the way by example. He was such a great person that it was good to have him on our team.

The playoffs were a disappointment for the Predators, who’d been weakened by a number of injuries down the stretch. Forsberg scored twice in a Game 2 victory over San Jose in the first round, but the Predators were eventually upended by the San Jose Sharks team, which had also totaled 51 wins during the regular season.

Forsberg had notched four points in the series’s five games, but by April 20, 2007, his time in Nashville was complete. Unfortunately, I didn’t play good enough to bring us far, Forsberg said after the final loss. A few things didn’t go our way. I really thought we had a good chance.… You feel like you could do more every time you lose, so it’s tough.

An unrestricted free agent that off-season, Forsberg re-signed with Colorado, where he had played from 1995 to 2004. But injuries limited him to just 11 more games in the rest of his career.

In 2014 Forsberg was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, having touched Music City with a little of his magic along the way. Aside from what happened here [in 2017] in the playoffs, that two-month period of time, for me, is the highlight of our franchise, Poile said. Other than the playoffs in 2017, the highest I’ve felt the interest in our franchise was when Peter Forsberg was here.

2. Lord Stanley’s Epic Spring in Music City

The combination of the Predators’ appearance in the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals, the Country Music Association Fest, and glorious spring temperatures produced some spectacular scenes in downtown Nashville in June 2017.

Only 17,283 hockey fans could be crammed into Bridgestone Arena prior to Game 3 of the Predators’ series versus Pittsburgh on June 3, 2017, but thousands more descended on Lower Broadway just to be part of the atmosphere. In fact, just before country music star Alan Jackson took the stage for a free concert at 5:00 pm, a jam-packed crowd estimated at 50,000 extended from Fifth Avenue all the way to the riverfront. The majority of those in attendance wore Predators jerseys, meaning long-distance shots of the area looked as if there was a sea of gold running between Broadway’s honky-tonks.

It was the kind of scene that was especially mind-blowing to out-of-towners, those who weren’t used to seeing Music City throw that kind of a party—especially not for hockey. I’ve never been to a college football game, but a lot of people told me that that’s some of the vibe I got out there, said Toronto native Chris Johnston, a reporter for Sportsnet in Canada. Even though I was in a suit and looked like an idiot, I spent about two hours walking around out there just because I was blown away by it all.… I was taking pictures and talking to people…just because I think 20 years from now, I’m going to tell people about that day.

On-and-off rain, as well as a Monday night game, helped limit the size of the outdoor crowd to only 10,000 to 15,000 people prior to Game 4 of the Cup Finals. But the conditions prior to Game 6 in Nashville on June 11 led to another monstrous outdoor gathering. Not only did the contest fall on a Sunday—with temperatures in the high 80s—but it also coincided with the final day of the immensely popular CMA Fest. A yearly tradition in Music City since 1972, the CMA Fest features hundreds of country music performers playing over a four-day period and draws tens of thousands of fans. Officials estimated the combination of Predators fans and country music fans downtown that day numbered between 60,000 and 70,000.

Preds fans not fortunate enough to get inside Bridgestone Arena still had plenty of opportunities to watch the game outside. Giant screens were moved into place for parties at Ascend Amphitheater and Walk of Fame Park in downtown Nashville, and three giant screens were put up on Broadway, which was closed from Fourth Avenue to Seventh Avenue. Each Stanley Cup Final has its own flavor, but there’s just a charm to this one, said Helene Elliott, the Los Angeles Times’s veteran NHL writer. The atmosphere in Nashville is just great. It’s Southern hospitality. It’s warmth. It’s fun. They know how to have fun here.

Downtown Nashville’s Broadway teems with Predators fans in advance of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

All the energy and enthusiasm outside, however, couldn’t overshadow the performance Predators fans were putting on inside Bridgestone. The team’s vocal supporters had drawn more and more attention as the playoffs progressed, as they helped propel the Predators to 6 straight postseason wins at home—and 9 wins in 11 home playoff games overall. Wrote Ken Campbell, senior writer for the Hockey News:

The thing that really struck me is that I’ve never, even in a Stanley Cup Final, been in a rink when the stands have been filled during the warm-ups like they were [in Nashville].

Never in Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, or Pittsburgh, never in any of those quote-unquote hockey markets. But [in the Stanley Cup Final] during pregame warm-ups here, this place was full of people in yellow shirts. And usually during warm-ups, people are just sitting there talking to each other. But these people were cheering during warm-ups, full-on cheering and chanting names like Pe-kka!

It’s amazing. It really is. There’s no question that people here have really, really embraced all of this, and that’s what it’s all about.

Predators players said they felt the passion of the crowd even while bunkered in their locker room in the moments before games. We can hear the fans five minutes before we even go out on the ice, Predators forward Austin Watson said. It’s an incredible feeling. That crowd is bumping. You can already feel the energy, and we just feed off that.

Former Predators captain Mike Fisher took a stab at trying to explain just what made Bridgestone Arena so deafening, even in comparison to postseason crowds at other NHL venues. Fisher noted that the size of Bridgestone, which isn’t as cavernous as places such as Chicago’s United Center, works to the home team’s advantage from a noise perspective. All those supporters packed together on top of the rink sound like an army, much the way Duke University’s small—but ear-blasting—home crowds affect games at Cameron Indoor Stadium. I think there [are] bigger buildings in the NHL than ours, but our fans are so passionate, Fisher said. [The fact that] it’s a smaller building makes the sound just unbelievable.

Added Arpon Basu, now a writer for the Athletic: A number of players mentioned that [Bridgestone] is a difficult place to play because the fans are right on top of you. The unique nature of the crowd here is that they really feel they’re impacting the game. You get a sense that they feel they’re having an impact on the visiting team and on their own team.

Basu sees other reasons the Predators have carved out their own in-game identity as well. One is the chanting that goes on from the home crowds here, especially when it comes to riding the opponents’ goalies—with the chant of It’s all your fault! It’s all your fault!—every time the Predators score. The chanting is…a very unique part of things here, Basu said. I guess it’s almost more of a collegiate atmosphere. But it’s really what makes it unique as far as hockey fans [go].

There were also the lengthy standing ovations during television timeouts, when Nashville fans got especially jacked up at times when most other supporters might sit down to catch their breath. For instance, the Preds faithful rose in unison at least four times during a Game 4 win over St. Louis in the second round, waving gold towels and roaring for the home team.

I’ve been a part of different teams and different playoff runs, said former Preds forward James Neal, who played for Pittsburgh and Dallas before Nashville. And honestly—I know every player says their fans are unbelievable—but you haven’t seen a rink with this much energy unless you’ve played in it. It’s crazy. It’s unbelievable. It’s so much fun to play in front of.

In the end, not even the emotional energy of the Preds fans could carry the team to its first Stanley Cup, as Pittsburgh won the final series 4–2. But there was a sense from the supporters afterward that they’d been part of something special, even if the last game on home ice was a loss. The defining moment for me was that after that game was over, and after the Cup ceremony was over, our fans still didn’t want to leave, Predators CEO and president Sean Henry said. They were still chanting in the building, still hugging, still cheering. It just reinforced what a wonderful market this is and how special it is.

3. The Great One Gave Nashville a Thrill

In his spectacular 20-year NHL career, Wayne Gretzky—aka the Great One—played almost 1,500 regular-season games. Only one was in Nashville, in 1999, but Gretzky made it a memorable one for Predators fans during the team’s expansion season. It was one of those career curtain-call kind of moments for Gretzky, then 38 years old and only two months shy of retiring from the game. He was well aware that this would be his only trip to Music City, so he put on a show-stopping performance. Gretzky piled up a season-high five assists in the New York Rangers’ 7–4 win over the Preds that night at the Nashville Arena, the most assists he’d posted in a single game in more than three years.

Almost two decades later, Gretzky—in Nashville during the Predators’ Stanley Cup Finals against Pittsburgh in 2017—had no problem recalling his big night here. In fact, he remembered feeling a special motivation to play well, perhaps in part due to the standing ovation given to him by Nashville’s sellout crowd on February 15, 1999. I was fired up to play in that game, Gretzky recalled. "I was ready to play and excited to play.… I remember thinking to myself, This is going to be my only time to play in Nashville. You always remember players [as a fan] when it’s the one time you saw them."

A strong argument could be made, of course, that Nashville might never have had an NHL team in the first place had it not been for the influence of Gretzky. When the Edmonton Oilers traded Gretzky to Los Angeles in 1988, hockey interest in the United States grew by leaps and bounds, breaking out of its traditional northern borders. Teams sprung up in cities such as Anaheim, San Jose, Tampa, Miami, Nashville, and Atlanta in the following decade, with two other established NHL teams moving south—Minnesota to Dallas and Winnipeg to Phoenix.

I was fortunate enough to get a one-on-one interview with Gretzky a few weeks before he arrived for that Nashville game in 1999, and I can remember his enthusiasm about the league’s push into the Sun Belt. Fifteen years ago, if you would have said there would be hockey in Dallas and Miami and Nashville, people probably would have been asking what type of alcoholic beverage you were drinking at the time, Gretzky said that day, following a Rangers practice in New York. We’ve made tremendous strides in that time. Now we’re in cities like that and we’re doing very well, so it’s great.

It made sense, then, that the Predators fans greeted him so warmly that night, despite the fact that he was wearing the opposing colors. They paid their respects to the greatest hockey player in history and offered thanks for the role he played in bringing the sport to Middle Tennessee. The fact that a jersey signed by Gretzky the night before his game sold for $5,700 at the Predators’ silent auction came as no surprise. I haven’t heard a cheer for him like that outside of New York, former Rangers coach John Muckler said. A great crowd—they saw a good show.

The only ones who weren’t at least partially pleased by Gretzky’s magic that night were—predictably—the Predators players and coaches. Gretzky assisted on four of the