One of the best kept secrets in Nashville, Tennessee is that there’s a professional hockey team called the Predators based here. You know, a couple of years ago, the Preds actually flirted with the best record in the league - but once into the playoffs, they were unceremoniously eliminated in the 1^st round. That was the season that Swedish great Peter Forsberg was signed to “put them over the top”…yeah, he hung around till the team was ousted in round one, then signed with Colorado.Since October 1998, when the Predators won their first game in Nashville, there have been other memorable games - even a couple of seasons worth mentioning - but , as they say, “no cigar”. There have been a good number of quality hockey players wearing the Nashville sweater since the inaugural season too. The aforementioned ex-Avalanche, ex-Flyer Peter Forsberg in 2007, briefly. In 2005, the Preds boasted Randy Robitaille, David Legwand, Darcy Hordichuk, Scott Hartnell, and Paul Kariya on their roster. Perhaps their best season, they cruised into the playoffs, only to get dumped once again. 

This season,  with a record of 22-24, Nashville is mired near the bottom of the league standings. Out of 30 NHL teams, 7 claim worse records. But now on a trip out west to meet Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, the Predators find themselves only 6 points out of a playoff position, having lost only to the Calgary Flames. Nashville coach Barry Trotz, the only man to ever coach the Preds looked at it this way. “We’re trying to claw ourselves back into the group. There are teams that we have to catch on this trip, and getting tow out of three in Canada is pretty tough. The two teams that we are really realistically chasing are Vancouver and Edmonton. So we got the right games.”Edmonton (25-21-3) out-shot Nashville 33-29, but could only tally once, late in the final period. After a scoreless first, Nashville’s J.P. Dumont snapped the games first score passed goaltender Dwayne Roloson at 12:04 of the second. In the third, Nashville’s Martin Erat took a feed from David Legwand to score his 13^th of the season, and with the Oiler’s Ales Hemsky netting a one-timer at 9:39, 2-1 was the final.

 ”Our team is full of guys that haven’t been drafted and worked their way up, and I call them true Predators,” coach Trotz said. “They’ve got a lot of fiber to their game. They might not have the stats, but they have the intangibles. Our third and fourth lines always have a lot of that.”

Nashville hosts Phoenix (24-22) Tuesday night at the Sommet center in Nashville, Tennessee. The Coyotes sport an identical 5-5-0 record to the Preds in their last 10 games, so something’s got to give.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 11:20 am and is filed under Hockey, NHL-West, Nashville Predators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.