NASHVILLE — Us Canadians, we know everything about hockey, don’t we?
So we furrowed our collective brow as NHL commissioner Gary Bettman Americanized “our game,” putting teams in markets like this one, where they required a red trail behind the puck to understand a televised game, and often didn’t know why the whistle blew.
It was bad enough that Quebec City would become Denver, but when Winnipeg turned into Phoenix, and teams popped up in places like Miami, Atlanta, Tampa, Raleigh and Nashville?
“What is that New York lawyer doing to our game,” we sniffed. And we weren’t always wrong.
Winnipeg’s Bryan Little was a first-round draft pick of the Atlanta Thrashers.
“It was different. It wasn’t easy,” he said of life as a Thrasher. “Most of the time you were playing in an empty building — 6,000 people, maybe, in a big arena. There was never really an atmosphere there.
“There was a small fanbase that were passionate about the game. But it wasn’t big enough.”
Ironically, Atlanta turned into Winnipeg. And in the end, not all of those markets were Atlantas.
Hockey thrives in San Jose, and while Florida seems always on the cusp of relocation, Tampa is solidly rooted and has a Stanley Cup banner in its rafters. Here in Tennessee, Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena has become the Chicago Stadium of the South. Somehow, our game met their people, and a love affair ensued.
Why here, but not so much in, say, Raleigh? How come these NASCAR-loving, college football fans got tuned in and turned on by hockey, but the ones in Sunrise, Fla., have not?
“You’ve got to win, but it’s also the way we play the game,” said Predators defenceman P.K. Subban. “You’ve got to remember: sports is entertainment. You have to be a fun team to watch. You go back to the days of the New Jersey Devils (in the ‘90s), that boring, trap style. The style we play … the fans love that stuff.”
Even today, the Devils languish in the 27th spot in league attendance, while Nashville has sold out every game for two seasons, averages 2,000 more fans per home game, and recently sold out all 14,000 season ticket packages for the 2018-19 season. So they started a season ticket waiting list — something the Ottawa Senators cannot claim.
But as Nashville has found success, why has Raleigh not? They are no less similar than Edmonton and Calgary, really.
“I think the difference between maybe Carolina and Nashville is, Nashville built in a straight line … to put a very good team on the ice year after year,” said Jets coach Paul Maurice, who spent seven seasons behind the Hurricanes bench. “When we first came here, there was nothing here. There was the rink, and then a parking lot that went for miles. And now this place has just exploded kind of around the team.
“There’s a passionate base in southern markets,” Maurice continued. “They love hockey. And they come to games to get a workout; they come to be involved in the games. I felt that in Carolina. They could never get the traction year after year.”
Traditionally, in the old Southern League days, folks down here came to watch the fights, and drank in a little hockey in between bouts. The Predators couldn’t promise a return to the days of Slap Shot, but they came out of the gate billing hockey as a “mixture between football and NASCAR.”
Nashville became ‘Smashville,’ and when things were bleak here a few years back — as Canadian Blackberry magnate Jim Balsillie circled, threatening to buy the club and move it to Hamilton — new, local ownership doubled down on the local flavour by amping up the country music vibe.
As the off-ice product sharpened, the on-ice product raised its game as well.
“It’s loud, there’s energy. You’ve got Broadway,” Subban said of the famous Honkytonk strip just outside the rink here. “You know, it’s everything around the hockey. The last thing is the game on the ice. Leading up to it, there is so much going around the team that makes it fun.
“It’s been fun playing here, for sure.”
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Today, as the Winnipeg Jets arrive at Bridgestone Arena with a mind to take that rare 2-0 lead back home to Manitoba, the atmosphere may be frenetic, but the home team is not. The Preds, from GM David Poile to the last defenceman, have been through plenty over the years, and survived it all.
What hasn’t killed them has made them — and this market — stronger than Bettman ever could have imagined.
“There are a bunch of these guys that have been together since we lost to Chicago in the first round (2015),” said head coach Peter Laviolette. “The next year we took on a couple Game 7s. Their experiences help build them, and they grow as players and they grow as a team to understand certain situations that might come up in a playoff series. Whether it’s a tough win or a tough loss, a blowout win or a blowout loss, I think there are always things that you can learn.
“We’re not that inexperienced team that we were three years ago, four years ago.”
Nor are these fans, who no longer wonder why the whistle sounds. Or if their hockey team is going to be around next fall.
Hockey works here, and the team? It is, frankly, better than anything we had in Canada this regular season.
Uncle Gary’s great expansion wasn’t perfect. But Nashville, it turns out, was a home run.
Who ever would have thought?
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