Dissecting the 2015 Nashville Predators
Poor Nashville. They were red hot for a good portion of the season but fizzled out at the end. The writers over at Puck Daddy, one of my favorite hockey blogs, take a look at the Preds and their players. Do you think they are predicting a conference title next year? Spoiler alert: Nah, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself. Read the blurb below and then let us know what you think.
We’ll never get over having seen the mayor of Nashville, “Hot” Karl Dean, standing on the ice in an oversized, never-worn Predators jersey talkin’ Christian values and good ol’ country fried patriotism. “Let’s sing the song together as one!” Yeah you’re not fooling anyone, you idiot. Everyone knows a real mayor would be too busy laundering money or defrauding investors to stand up at some sporting event pleading for some kind of prayer circle to stop the red clad demons from the north from having too much fun in his piss-stained Garden of Eden.
He even claimed it would be, “an affront to God” if Hawks fans were to cheer while the person next to them sang the anthem, as if a God worried about the pregame antics of hockey fans was one worth worshipping. “Well I don’t care about mass murder in the Middle East or disease or poverty, but the dude with the Italian beef stain on his knockoff Kane jersey cheering while Sausage Gravy Jill belts her heart out really rubs my rhubarb!”
It became quite the hobby of Preds fans on social media to point out the arrest records for the admittedly boorish behavior of travelling Hawks fans. But that hobby has become so time consuming that clearly they have neglected to keep tabs on their own kids, with a local high school tabulating 134 arrests in the past 8 months. Perhaps once these kids get out of school they’ll be able to parlay their hourly wage from the local Jiffy Lube into Preds season tickets, priced so low they’re practically being given away, and finally give the Hawks a legitimate run for their money at something.
But the stupid off the ice doesn’t end there.
Led by a general manager David Poile, who has never done less to build a winner and yet received more love and admiration this side of Jim Nill, the Predators said this year was the year things would change. And then he went out and signed Olli Jokinen and Derek Roy. He’s given credit for parlaying Martin Erat into Filip Forsberg, but when any trade is at the expense of the criminally underreported idiocy of George McPhee, how many real accolades can be given? Combine this with picking Dustin Brown for the Olympic team, and one has to wonder if they aren’t sprinkling his pork shoulder with lead paint down there in Smashville.
It was out with the “stab your eyes out with a pencil” style of boring hockey incorporated by the neckless Barry Trotz and in with the back-stabbing, passive aggressive Peter Laviolette.
(Don’t worry Preds fans, we’re sure this time Peter Laviolette is really in it for the long haul and his team won’t stage a coup d’etat after a season and a half.)
Because an up-tempo style of hockey was going to magically transform Paul Gaustad from a one-dimensional turd into a high flying center worth trading a 1st-round draft pick for. How does one win so many faceoffs and get this skulled possession-wise without actually stopping to vomit up stomach acids every shift? Gaustad somehow figured out a way.
Ah, but the Predators have more than just Gaustad to look to for offense, you see.
They also have Viktor Stalberg signed at $4 million per. The same Viktor Stalberg who has never scored more than 12 goals in a NHL season when he wasn’t playing on a line with Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. The same Viktor Stalberg who played nearly as many games for the Milwaukee Admirals as the Nashville Predators this year.
And we can’t forget the lifeblood of a team that never fails to provide greatness in the regular season – old [Poop] Hip (or the artist formerly known as Pekka Rinne). [Poop] Hip, much like his general manager, has acquired the innate ability to win over the minds of “hockey” people despite never doing anything much of substance in his career.
Read the full article at Puck Daddy.
Image courtesy of Sean Russell.
