Nashville has been a smashing success
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - At famed Jack’s Bar-B-Que on Broadway, where grub is served cafeteria-style, a worker in the food assembly line is focused on her job until she sees the patron at the front of her line is rocking a gold Nashville Predators’ shirt.
“Go Preds,” she says, nodding before pushing across his tray of smoked chicken and potato salad.
Just blocks from the team’s Bridgestone Arena, the new tallest building in the city is under construction and workers have a hung a Predators flag at its highest point.
And at the Fifth Third Bank, a Predators’ corporate sponsor, “Every branch looks like a high school gym at homecoming now,” Predators CEO and President Sean Henry said. “Blue and Gold everywhere. The drive-in windows are all soaped up with real engagements: ‘Sign up for a checking account and get a team jersey.’ ”
With the Predators in the Western Conference final for the first time, Predators fever is an epidemic in the city.
“There was a time where it wasn’t a foolish thing to say, ‘I don’t pay attention to hockey,’ ” said Willy Daunic, the Predators’ television broadcaster and talk show host at 102.5 The Game. “If you put that out there today, you don’t sound like you are with it. You are not ‘cool’ if you say that.”
Predators defenseman Matt Irwin said, “You can feel the buzz in the city.”
A Nashville playoff game has become a marquee event. “I come down and get off the elevator and Nicole Kidman is standing there,” Predators general manager David Poile said.
Kidman is married to country star Keith Urban who sang the national anthem before Game 3 of the series with the Anaheim Ducks.
Ralph Schulz, president of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and a season-ticket holder, said Predators fever has been contagious.
“You can see the ‘Gold’ passion build,” Schulz said. “You can see it on the street with people wearing jerseys all day to work.”
The city plaza wasn’t big enough to hold everyone who wanted to watch Game 3 on an oversized television outside the arena, so a big screen had to go up in the neighboring park to handle overflow.
“People are chanting and the sound is bouncing off the walls of the buildings,” Schulz said. “It’s a blast and everyone is caught up in it.”
Predators’ employees are lined up and high-fiving fans as they leave the building.
Ten years ago, people were holding rallies to save the franchise, and now the Predators are the hottest ticket in town. On eBay on Thursday, someone was selling two tickets for Game 4, 15 rows from the Plexiglass, for $10,000.
“When they started winning, ev- eryone went crazy,” said fan Dan Harrell, a retiree and a Nashvillearea resident since 1967.
The Predators’ 10-4 postseason record is the NHL’s best, an impressive run given the team had the worst record (41-29-12) among the Western Conference qualifiers.
Daunic said talk radio only used to offer listeners small doses of Predators talk. “You were scared to talk about it too much,” Daunic said. “Now this is what people want to talk about.”
Games 2, 3 and 4 of the West final had local ratings of 10.7, 10.9 and 11.2, the three highest-rated games the city has had on the NBC Networks.
The crazed, passionate fans have become part of the story in Nashville. Home teams have a 38-37 record in the 2017 NHL playoffs, but the Predators are 6-1 at home. Until Thursday, they had won 10 consecutive home playoff games dating to last season.
The Predators refer to their crowd as the “Seventh man,” and players constantly talk about the charge they gain from their fans.
“It’s hard to put into words what you feel on the ice when the fans get behind you,” Irwin said. “You feel that energy in warmup, and they carry through the puck to the final buzzer.”
Henry said “some people say there’s no such thing as a home-ice advantage, but we feel like we’re tapping into it.”
“The players believe in it,” Henry said. “Our coach (Peter Laviolette) believes in it.
Henry could sense Predators fever starting to ramp up in the first round even before Nashville swept the Chicago Blackhawks.
“When the playoffs started this year, there was probably 200 Chicago fans in our building,” Henry said. “Our fans realized: ‘This is ours.’ I think we realized this is a special market.”
The Predators can now match the passion of other markets, but they don’t celebrate playoffs the same way as they do in Montreal or Pittsburgh or New York.
People are so intent on being a part of the Predators success that the team is now selling $99 tickets for the right to stand in the arena’s concourse and watch the game on the televisions.
“You just want to be able to celebrate together,” Henry said.
You see sideshows at a Nashville game that you won’t see everywhere else. For example, the Predators haul an old car from the junkyard, have an artist paint it with their playoff rival’s colors and logo and then ask their fans to hammer it into submission.
Once a car is pulverized, it’s further crushed by a machine, and placed on display for all to see. Right now, on the corner of the arena, you can see the “cubed up” remains of the cars of the teams they’ve eliminated in the playoffs, the Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues.
“You can feel the buzz in the city.” MATT IRWIN, PREDATORS DEFENSEMAN