Predators make some noise
Nashville arrives as a hockey town with crucial victory
For all the talk of Nashville as a hockey town, as the epicentre of a party that the NHL probably wishes it could bottle and export to every market that ever faltered and threatened to fail, the real heart of it is a hockey team that was worthy of the noise.
The Predators swept Chicago and ate up St. Louis and outlasted Anaheim’s murderous intent, and even after losing the first two games of the Stanley Cup final, it was clear: Get a little luck and some goaltending, and the Predators were the better team. Well, there you are. Nashville fell behind and then swept over the Pitts- burgh Penguins in Game 3, and after winning 5-1, now trail the series 2-1. This is a series again, which was, for Nashville, the minimum requirement. Without a win, all the joy surrounding this team might feel a little empty.
Instead, it was allowed to bloom. Outside the building the streets teemed with everyone, from families to bands of bros to guys with biker beards to the city’s inexhaustible supply of bachelorette parties, featuring phalanxes of tanned young women with matching T-shirts and the exhausted eyes of people trying to have a life-defining time for a few days in a town like Nashville. It’s not for amateurs.
Inside the building they threw catfish and howled and appended the word “SUCKS!” to the announcement of the Penguins starting lineup, and stood and cheered through TV timeouts. People who called it the greatest crowd in history were perhaps a little hyperbolic, but the crowd was just fantastic. Nobody ever said you had to teach Americans to be sports fans. It just depends on the sport.
“This is No. 1,” said Predators forward P.A. Parenteau. “I played in (Montreal’s) Bell Centre, in the playoffs, and this is crazier. Yeah.”
He noted Montreal’s been going crazy for hockey for 200 years, and here it is still new — as one Nashville cop put it, surveying the crowds, “It’s really ramped up in the last few weeks. A lot of people have been big Predators fans for a month.”
Everybody knows it wasn’t always like this. When then-owner Craig Leipold tried to sell the team to BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie 10 years ago, he had lost $70 million (U.S.) over 10 years and said, “I have come to the conclusion that I cannot make it work here.
“As hard as we tried and as good a team as we had — I mean, we are one of the elite teams in this league, and we (have) by far the lowest revenue. It doesn’t work.”
Local ownership helped save them, as did public money: The Tennessean newspaper estimates the city contributed $81.7 million since ’08.
But oh, it was a show. Just 2:46 into the game Pittsburgh’s Jake Guentzel buried an Ian Cole rebound for his fourth goal in three games. Pekka Rinne couldn’t hold onto the rebound, and it was 1-0 Pittsburgh.
And while the Predators continued to dominate 5-on-5 play, after one period of Game 3 Pittsburgh goaltender Matt Murray was at a .947 save percentage in the playoffs, and the Penguins were waiting to see if they could either sneak something else past Rinne or kill the clock for a full 57 minutes.
They couldn’t. Roman Josi tied it on a power play shot that went in off Pittsburgh centre Carter Rowney’s hand, and 42 seconds later Frederick Gaudreau pulled down a pass on a rush into the Pittsburgh zone and whipped a wrist shot under Murray’s glove. Then, it got loud. The goals happened so fast it took a little time for the crowd to regroup and do their elaborate ‘Mur-ray, Murray, It’s All Your Fault’ chant. They did, but it took a minute for everything to settle down.
This was Nashville as a hockey town at the highest level, with a team worthy of every bit of the noise. The Penguins actually pushed back, in some of their best two-way play of the series, and Rinne had to make a big sliding save off Chris Kunitz after giving up another big rebound of a Phil Kessel shot. He might not have made that save in the first two games.
Nashville added a third goal at the end of the period on a tremendous shift from Victor Arvidsson that ended with James Neal’s first goal since Game 2 of the conference final; they got another one from Craig Smith in the third on a breakaway, and one more from Mattias Ekholm on a rush. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin combined for no shots on goal. Wipeout.
Rinne had allowed eight goals in the first two games, and at least three in five games since the start of the conference final, but he made 27 saves: He made a big-time paddle save on Conor Sheary in the third, and while he still looked awkward he was good enough, and his team was better. So in the third it got nasty between the teams — Pittsburgh’s skill guys looked appropri- ately frustrated — but in the stands they were hucking catfish and cowboy hats and whatever else on the ice in Tennessee, thundering and delirious. This was Hockey Night in America, and the Stanley Cup final truly arrived in Nashville.
Nashville arrived, too.