Subban fits right in with Predators
Nashville, team embraced traded star from start
He has the personalNASHVILLE ity, the flair, the following, the power to bring hockey to new fans. And he’s right in the middle of the sport’s wildest home.
P.K. Subban and the Nashville Predators’ Bridgestone Arena are perfect for each other. Bridgestone is non-traditional and modern, and it’s a wall of unruly noise each night the Predators advance a run that is now one victory away from the Stanley Cup Final — which they can achieve Monday at home against the Anaheim Ducks.
Subban is a modern-day international hockey star, No. 2 in NHL playoff jersey sales among players still competing — right behind Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby. He’s a black man in a sport that is 93% white, playing in his first season in a city that is 28% black, an obvious opportunity to broaden hockey’s appeal in a growing international city formed for country music.
Nashville sold out every home game in the regular season, along with all of its suites in what team President and CEO Sean Henry said was the franchise’s best financial year to date. Nashville has about 10,200 season ticketholders — just 10 years after fans held a “Save the Predators” rally to keep the team from moving.
“If kids want to look up to me as a role model, that’s great,” Subban said in an interview with The
Tennessean. “But I’ve always just been somebody who wanted to be recognized for what I do on the ice. Obviously, I understand that there’s only a few black hockey players in the league, so people are going to talk about that regardless, and that’s fine. I know who I am and I know what I represent. But at the end of the day, it’s hard enough playing in the National Hockey League to be playing for anything else other than to win and be part of a winning team.”
He’s part a team that has bounced back from an inconsistent regular season to win 11 of 15 playoff games and leads 3-2 against Anaheim in the first Western Conference finals in the franchise’s 19-year history. Predators general manager David Poile shook the hockey world by trading beloved captain Shea Weber to the Montreal Canadiens for Subban on June 29, and interest in the Predators soared. Weber had been the face of the Nashville franchise, leading the team to eight playoff appearances in his 11 seasons.
That was not the point of the deal, but Poile did say of Subban’s marketability, “It’s a positive that P.K. brings what I call ‘a lot of touches’ to our franchise because he has an international brand.”
Subban joins Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota as the most marketable sports figures in Nashville since the late Steve McNair ran the Titans offense. Subban, 28, came to Nashville and immediately caused a buzz by singing at famed honkytonk Tootsie’s, and the buzz for him and this team has not relented.
TV ratings also have soared in the playoffs after a 30% increase during the regular season on Fox Sports Tennessee. National analysts are gushing about the team and Bridgestone environment.
“Whatever anyone thought about Nashville as a hockey market before, it doesn’t apply now,” said Arpon Basu, Montreal-based senior managing editor of LNH.com, the NHL’s French-language site. “It’s healthy, it’s vibrant, it’s thriving.”
So is the Predators locker room, where Subban is not a star. He’s simply one of several good, young players on a team pushing for a Stanley Cup and captivating a city. On his first day in Nashville, he met with Poile, and they both said winning a Cup is priority No. 1. This season has seen ups, downs and a Subban back injury, but he said the team has “made me feel like I’ve been a part of it for six years.”
“I figured the first year would be the hardest, fitting in to our locker room and culture, fitting in to Nashville — remember, he never asked to be traded,” Poile said of Subban. “Of course there’s going to be an adjustment period, but in the last quarter of the (regular) season and the playoffs, he couldn’t be fitting in any better than he is right now.”
And Nashville and the hockey world couldn’t be much more interested in where this goes.