Official Nashville Predators Thread

#3,726
#3,726
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#3,727
#3,727
Dallas (34-27-11, 79 pts) 9th in Western
Nashville (32-31-11, 75 pts) 11th in Western

Last 10: NSH (6-3-1) W1, DAL (5-4-1) L1
Season Series: NSH 2-1 (Game 4 of 5)
Last Game: NSH 4-1, January 20th, 2014
 
#3,729
#3,729
Toujours Pret said:
The fact that its turned into an award that ignores defensive competence doesn't bode well for him winning anytime soon. Yandle will win one before Weber, even though he's an adventure on the back end.
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For once, we absolutely agree. Most awards in major sports are becoming polarized like this too.
 
#3,735
#3,735
I just found out I get the Predators games on FoxSports Tennessee on Ellijay Telephone and Cable. I'll have to start keeping up with the Predators. I thought I was pretty much SOL on hockey after the Thrashers left Atlanta a while back(if You could ever call what the Thrashers played was hockey).
 
#3,737
#3,737
JL 103 said:
Sad to hear about Trotz. But you guys need some fresh blood.
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That's the same thing that happened to the Thrashers(having the same coach for far too long). I think though the Preds are far more committed to winning that the Thrashers ever were.
 
#3,738
#3,738
Dave1967 said:
That's the same thing that happened to the Thrashers(having the same coach for far too long). I think though the Preds are far more committed to winning that the Thrashers ever were.
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The Thrashers problem was that Atlanta is a terrible sports city. I don't know why, but the fact remains that Atlanta really only cares about College sports, then the Braves, Falcons, and Hawks if there's time.
 
#3,739
#3,739
JL 103 said:
The Thrashers problem was that Atlanta is a terrible sports city. I don't know why, but the fact remains that Atlanta really only cares about College sports, then the Braves, Falcons, and Hawks if there's time.
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The hockey fans I talked to down here tried to blame ticket prices for the failure of the Thrashers. Hockey wont return to Atlanta for another 25-30 years.
 
#3,740
#3,740
Dave1967 said:
The hockey fans I talked to down here tried to blame ticket prices for the failure of the Thrashers. Hockey wont return to Atlanta for another 25-30 years.
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They can try and make excusses. But the truth is nobody cared about them in Atlanta.
 
#3,741
#3,741
I heard the Trashers had real poor marketing. They were kind of like the Predators before the current owners took over. You notice the Predators everywhere now, but not so much before the current owners took over.

Sad to hear about Trotz. If I said I agreed with alot of his choices this year (shootout choices, setting up lines, and scratching MDZ) I'd be a liar.

However, I appreciate everything he has done for the team and community. He is a great man and I hope he stays with the Preds.
 
#3,742
#3,742
It's sad about Trotz. There have been some great memories during his time here, and he's helped to grow the game in Nashville. I wish him all the best.
 
#3,743
#3,743
JL 103 said:
They can try and make excusses. But the truth is nobody cared about them in Atlanta.
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The Thrashers were successful in Atlanta as long as they remained under the Turner/Time Warner ownership umbrella. Attendance was good. The team seemed to be improving. What destroyed the Thrashers was being sold in a bundle with the Hawks to an ownership group never had any interest in owning the hockey team; their plan from the start was to flip the Thrashers ASAP. Unfortunately these nimrods started suing each other just a few months after the sale closed, meaning they couldn't sell the team to someone who wanted it. Meaning that for eight years the team was a driverless vehicle. They had a minimum payroll. They never bothered to change the incompetent GM. They made no effort to compete. They made no effort to keep Ilya Kovalchuk when his contract expired, which was the final straw for fans. Attendance finally cratered. Perhaps it's worth pointing out that up until, say, 2008 Atlanta outdrew Nashville in attendance every year, despite only making the playoffs once and never winning a single playoff game.

Anyway, EVEN THEN the team didn't move because "nobody cared." The Thrashers moved because, after eight years, the owners finally resolved their lawsuit. As soon as I read that in the paper, I turned to the wife and told her that the team would be gone within a year. And sure enough, they were sold almost immediately to the first bidder, and that bidder was in Winnipeg. Ownership killed NHL hockey in Atlanta, not apathy.
 
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#3,744
#3,744
Vercingetorix said:
The Thrashers were successful in Atlanta as long as they remained under the Turner/Time Warner ownership umbrella. Attendance was good. The team seemed to be improving. What destroyed the Thrashers was being sold in a bundle with the Hawks to an ownership group never had any interest in owning the hockey team; their plan from the start was to flip the Thrashers ASAP. Unfortunately these nimrods started suing each other just a few months after the sale closed, meaning they couldn't sell the team to someone who wanted it. Meaning that for eight years the team was a driverless vehicle. They had a minimum payroll. They never bothered to change the incompetent GM. They made no effort to compete. They made no effort to keep Ilya Kovalchuk when his contract expired, which was the final straw for fans. Attendance finally cratered. Perhaps it's worth pointing out that up until, say, 2008 Atlanta outdrew Nashville in attendance every year, despite only making the playoffs once and never winning a single playoff game.

Anyway, EVEN THEN the team didn't move because "nobody cared." The Thrashers moved because, after eight years, the owners finally resolved their lawsuit. As soon as I read that in the paper, I turned to the wife and told her that the team would be gone within a year. And sure enough, they were sold almost immediately to the first bidder, and that bidder was in Winnipeg. Ownership killed NHL hockey in Atlanta, not apathy.
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So they got better fan support than the Hawks? The Hawks are a perennial playoff team, and yet when I went to see them play the Grizz at home at 7pm on a Saturday, the place was a ghost town. The few fans that did show up were dressed like it was a social event, and behaved that way as well.

Atlanta is not a hockey town, and they apparently aren't a basketball town either. They are a football town. And the Barves.

I'm not pretending to know more about the situation than you, but I know that fan support in that city is questionable at best.
 
#3,745
#3,745
The Thrashers seemed to be far better supported than the Hawks while they were here, at least up until the owners let Kovalchuk walk. You saw far more Thrashers shirts around town. Attendance was higher. A lot of northern transplants were thrilled to have hockey in town and threw themselves into it pretty hard.

As far as the overall fan support in Atlanta, it's what you'd expect from a city where at least 80 percent of the ticket-buying demographic is from somewhere else. People root for the teams they grew up with, and the vast majority of the adults in Atlanta who can afford to go to a sporting event grew up somewhere else. I have neighbors who are Cavaliers fans and Pistons fans and Knicks fans and Celtics fans because that's where they're from. I started rooting for the local pro teams when I moved here because, as a typical southerner, I didn't have any strong existing connection to other teams, but that's not the case with most of the sports fans who moved here in the last 25 years. People here don't go to Hawks games not because they don't care about basketball; it's because they're sitting home watching their home teams play on TV.

Same thing with the Falcons; same thing to some extent with the Braves. A lot of existing northern hockey fans were willing to double up and root for both their own team and the Thrashers for awhile because it was a new team and they wanted so badly for hockey to succeed here, but nobody's going to move down from Boston or Chicago and jump on the Falcons or the Hawks.
 
#3,746
#3,746
I'm going to throw this out there from my short time period in Atlanta. Atlanta doesn't have fan support because:

1. The downtown area is not really a hotbed like other megacity downtown areas. This is a spread out city. It has a downtown, and midtown is nice, but for 5M people, it's fairly unspectacular*.

2. See the Braves attendance map. That isn't going to be all that different for Falcons, Hawks, etc. The NFL is a different animal that plays on Sundays. The Hawks and Thrasher on a Tuesday doesn't stand a chance when those people need to drive downtown in rush hour. TV wins. The Braves attendance isn't that much better than the Hawks.

3. Both those + traffic = no go.

The Braves, despite the national uproar, are making a good decision. The Falcons will be fine despite the location. The Hawks and Thrasher never really stood a chance, imo. And neither does the MLS team.

*Not hating. I love walking around Centennial. But the masses do not. They run to the car. It's got a bad reputation (maybe deserved considering where the Dome is located).
 
#3,747
#3,747
Vercingetorix said:
The Thrashers were successful in Atlanta as long as they remained under the Turner/Time Warner ownership umbrella. Attendance was good. The team seemed to be improving. What destroyed the Thrashers was being sold in a bundle with the Hawks to an ownership group never had any interest in owning the hockey team; their plan from the start was to flip the Thrashers ASAP. Unfortunately these nimrods started suing each other just a few months after the sale closed, meaning they couldn't sell the team to someone who wanted it. Meaning that for eight years the team was a driverless vehicle. They had a minimum payroll. They never bothered to change the incompetent GM. They made no effort to compete. They made no effort to keep Ilya Kovalchuk when his contract expired, which was the final straw for fans. Attendance finally cratered. Perhaps it's worth pointing out that up until, say, 2008 Atlanta outdrew Nashville in attendance every year, despite only making the playoffs once and never winning a single playoff game.

Anyway, EVEN THEN the team didn't move because "nobody cared." The Thrashers moved because, after eight years, the owners finally resolved their lawsuit. As soon as I read that in the paper, I turned to the wife and told her that the team would be gone within a year. And sure enough, they were sold almost immediately to the first bidder, and that bidder was in Winnipeg. Ownership killed NHL hockey in Atlanta, not apathy.
Click to expand...

Most of the fans in attendance were fans of other teams that either now lived in Atlanta, thus not buying more than a couple games, or they traveled down there because it was warm. The market wasn't stable enough after Ted left, the same happened to WCW, Ted pumped a ton of money because he loved sports. Atlanta is a bad sports town for some reason. I've seen Falcons games were the crowd was 1/4 Niners fans.
 
#3,748
#3,748
It'll be interesting to see who the Preds turn to. I appreciate everything Trotz did but I think it's a good time for a change.
 
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