Grand Ol’ Hockey

Music spills onto the street from nearly every storefront on Broadway between Second and Fifth avenues, and every place that doesn’t sell barbecue, guitars or souvenirs is a honky-tonk. Walk past any time of day, and someone is sure to be singing about lost love and heartache, hoping a guitar and a soulful song will be a ticket to stardom.

Across the street from the Ernest Tubb record shop and down the block from the Blue Grass Inn and the Gibson Cafe and Guitar Shop is the newest star factory in Music City. But it’s not a honky-tonk. It’s a hockey-tonk.

The Nashville Arena is home to the expansion Predators, the NHL’s 27th team. The unlikely pairing of a northern-rooted sport and a smallish Southern city devoted to football, NASCAR and country music has sparked an instant infatuation, uniting worlds that turn out to be surprisingly alike.

“I haven’t been around a lot of movie stars, but the feeling I get is country music people are as down to earth as you can get,” Predator Coach Barry Trotz said. “They’re regular people who are doing a great job at what they do. They don’t have big entourages or make a big production when they go somewhere, and Nashville people respect that. If you do a good job, they will support you. We’ve had terrific support, and it’s been a lot of fun.”

Singer Barbara Mandrell hosted a party for players, front-office staff and their guests at her 30,000-square-foot log home, dispensing as many hugs as canapes. Reba McEntire attends Predator games with her son but without an agent or body guards. Mindy McCready phoned a local gossip columnist to boast she’s dating defenseman Drake Berehowsky. “Isn’t he adorable?” she cooed.

Deana Carter often sends the team good-luck notes. So does Garth Brooks, who met Trotz when Trotz was coaching in Portland, Maine. Brooks was tickled to learn Trotz had used Brooks’ song “The Dance” to inspire his team to the American Hockey League championship, and they kept in touch. After the Predators hired Trotz, Brooks invited him over for a barbecue. To Trotz’s astonishment, Brooks insisted on serving him.

“No one works as hard at the business as he does and no one is more down to earth,” Trotz said. “You pay to come see him and you get your money’s worth. Those are the qualities I wish I could learn to teach players, because that’s really our business.”

That down-home attitude has created a bond between Nashville’s musicians and hockey players. Not everyone appreciates what they do, but they appreciate each other, and people in Nashville hope this confluence of talent will give their city a new, sophisticated image.

“The Predators are doing good, and it does Nashville good. Between them and the NFL team, it really makes Nashville big-time,” said Mark Dershem, a health care administrator who hadn’t seen an NHL game before this season but now grabs his company’s season tickets. “This gives us a lot of exposure. Nashville is a progressive city, and people are hearing more about us. We’re not just a small town. We’ve become a major competitor.”

ABCs on Ice

Besides being the capital of country music--the Ryman Auditorium, a country shrine, is a short walk from the arena--Nashville is home to many health-care companies and publishers and recently became the 30th-biggest U.S. television market, with a metropolitan population of 1.2 million. But despite the city’s increasing economic diversity, there was skepticism when Craig Leipold, a Wisconsin telemarketing and manufacturing mogul, teamed with Gaylord Entertainment and paid $80 million for the franchise.

After all, Nashville has little hockey history. There’s a small fan base, thanks to short-lived minor league teams and to a Saturn plant an hour away in Spring Hill that employs many workers from Detroit and other hockey cities. But for the most part, icing and offside are still mysteries here.

“Our first game, as soon as the puck went into the offensive zone, people stood up and cheered. Sometimes you wonder if they think they’re at a football game,” said defenseman John Slaney, a former King. “But people who have been here for a long time are starting to understand it more.”

The Predators have a missionary zeal about educating fans. They hold clinics called “Hockey 101,” distribute pamphlets that explain rules and penalties, and offer headsets to tune in an in-house audio feed describing hockey’s fine points. Even so, players are often asked whether the fights are real and how they can skate and stickhandle at the same time. “The other big one is, ‘Are you a starter?’ ” team captain Tom Fitzgerald said. “That comes from football and basketball.”

Said defenseman J.J. Daigneault, a former Mighty Duck: “It’s not a market like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, where every teenager grew up with hockey, but that’s going to come. They’re going to grow up and say, ‘I want to be like [goalie] Mike Dunham,’ like I grew up in Montreal saying I wanted to be like Serge Savard.”

The Whole Tooth

Contrary to stereotypes, there are no more pickup trucks downtown than in any other NHL city and everyone in the $153-million arena appears to have a full set of teeth, except some players. Mindful of a joke the Predators would be the only team whose players have more teeth than the fans, the Predators ran a clever marketing campaign featuring country stars such as Amy Grant and Lorrie Morgan grinning through blacked-out teeth, holding hockey equipment and asking, “Got Tickets?”

More than 12,000 season-seat holders do. Although the Predators have sold out the 17,298-seat arena only twice--for their Oct. 10 opener and for Friday’s game against the Mighty Ducks--they have averaged 15,584 fans in the 10 home dates. That includes about 1,200 giveaways--NHL teams commonly barter tickets for promotional services--but still beats many established teams.

“People had no idea what this thing was all about,” said Jack Diller, the Predators’ president and a former executive of the NBA San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks and NHL New York Rangers. “The biggest part of the conversion was we knew a lot of people in the marketplace didn’t know the game, but there were also a lot of businesspeople who didn’t know what the arena meant. That was vital to us, because corporate support has become so important. There’s no history of insurance brokers and stock brokers, at the end of the weekday, grabbing a client and doing business with that client at a game. It was, in a sense, a bigger education to businesses about the opportunity than to educate people about hockey. . . .

“What we had to get through their minds was that this is a five-hour opportunity to sell their company or product, or to keep employees happy by rewarding them with tickets. That takes time. By and large, we are very pleased with what has happened from a ticket standpoint. The response of the public so far has been fantastic. Most people here have never seen an arena presentation with the Jumbotron and everything, all the things that drive people from the original six teams crazy. We’ve got 2,500 tickets per game to sell. Viewed against the rest of the NHL, our season-ticket basis and single-game sales are very good. I look at it is I want to sell every ticket.”

A Goal of Goals

The Predators’ attacking game is a selling point, and it has helped them stay close to a Western Conference playoff berth. Trotz didn’t want to be like the Ducks and Florida Panthers, who became competitive quickly by using a neutral-zone trap to drag opponents down to their level. “We thought if we went with speed, people will appreciate it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t play defensively. . . . I watched the neutral-zone trap, and a lot of times, if you’re not a hockey person, you think, ‘They’re not even trying.’ ”

General Manager David Poile agrees. “Our goal here for sure is to get a little bit better each year, but one of our goals is when we lose, to be entertaining so it’s interesting enough for people to come back,” he said.

Their offensive inclination has inadvertently created their first star. Dunham, who was Martin Brodeur’s backup in New Jersey before the Predators chose him in the expansion draft, has became a hero for withstanding barrages that exceed 33 shots per game and compiling a 2.77 goals-against average and .918 save percentage. Jerseys with his or Fitzgerald’s name on the back are everywhere at the arena.

“The people have been very supportive,” Dunham said. “On opening night, we went out for warmups and the place was packed. I don’t know if they knew if they were supposed to be there or just were so excited, they wanted to be there. Once they’ve seen a game in person, they’re hooked.”

Trotz agreed. “There’s no question in my mind we have the loudest rink in the NHL,” he said. “I almost fell asleep in Calgary [last month]. Our locker room is about 20 feet from the ice, and between periods we have to shut all the doors because the guys can’t hear me say anything. It’s pretty hard not to get up for a game here.”

Growing With the City

Steve and Angela Speakman of Nashville get up for the games, as does their 8-month-old daughter, Chastity. She can’t recognize a neutral-zone trap, but she never took her eyes off the puck as her father tested his slap shot with a street hockey stick and rubber puck in an exhibit at the arena.

“College football is the main thing here, but the crowd is getting into it,” Steve Speakman said. “Once fans learn about the game, they’ll come for the action instead of the fights. The players really give their all.”

While the Predators needed a late push last March to meet the NHL’s 12,000-seat quota for getting the franchise, they hoped they planted seeds for a relationship that will outlast the novelty of the new arena, new team and loud intermission shows. They believe they can co-exist with other sports, especially because the Tennessee Oilers have made a series of public relations blunders since moving from Houston and the Predators’ efforts have been perceived as friendly and effective.

“What we’re trying to do, to a certain extent, is like the Green Bay Packers,” Poile said. “You get corporate support and then develop a fan base to make the thing work. . . . People have been very warm. They want us to be successful because it’s a reflection on them if we succeed.”

They’ve already succeeded in Bruce Terhune’s eyes. A welder for Saturn, Terhune is a Bostonian who moved to Tennessee five years ago. “My grandfather took me to Boston Garden and my father took me, and now I’m taking my daughter to games and she loves it,” he said. “It’s a little different, but they’re very fan-oriented and they’re making a great effort to get people involved. People will catch on. Once they see how fast and exciting it is, they’ll come back.”