New fan from UK

[Munos85]

Hi

I've been getting into the NFL over the past year or so (Saints fan) and now I've decided I want to start watching the NHL also, I've spent the last week or so deciding which team to follow and I've landed on the Nashville predators, I wanted to pick a team that have never won a stanley cup, had colours I like, and a cool logo, I came down to either the predators or the sharks but i'm not keen on the colour teal.

So I need your help, what is the current state of play with the predators? Who are the best players? What does the future look like? who are our rivals? what are the best sites for the predators? I've tried using the predators reddit but for some reason non of my posts seems to be showing.

I support Manchester United here in England and I started following the saints around a year and half ago.

thanks

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[Gnashville]

The Predators are transitioning from a Stanley Cup contender to a rebuilding team.
The NHL works within a Salary Cap structure and as teams age they begin to lose their competitiveness. Some rebuilds are quick and others are slow.
The Predators best players are Forsberg and Josi. They have lots of talented but inconsistent young players. Luke Evangelista, Tommy Novak are in that position.
They also have many young prospects playing in various levels of hockey. Pay attention to the Milwaukee Admirals as they have many drafted and developing players.
Our rivals are Chicago, St Louis, Winnipeg, and Minnesota. It depends on who you ask which one is the most hated. Chicago when they were winning were an obnoxious and disrespectful fanbase, St Louis also but a smaller version of Chicago, Winnipeg was formally Atlanta and we absorbed some of their fans with latent animosity and Minnesota’s owner once owned our franchise.
Here is the best place for fans to discuss the team, so welcome and I hope you can get good information here.

On the Forecheck is a great fan site.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

I think you just have to slowly absorb the dialogue over a period of many months and maybe a couple years and not take anything anybody here says too seriously... take it ALL in... because there are lots of diverging opinions, and then if you get a chance to watch some games yourself and start to form your own opinions from that, you'll get a better sense of what you yourself really think. Our team atm isn't one that is very easy to describe and the path it is on isn't even something everybody agrees on.

 

[PredsV82]

@Munos85

To add to what others have said, the Predators have been blessed with elite goaltending for most of the last 20 seasons. Jusse Saros is an All-Star and Vezina (award given annually to the best goaltender in the league) contender. He's struggling bit so far this year but I expect he will be better as the season progresses.

To echo what @Porter Stoutheart said, as a new fan, don't get too invested in the conversations we have here. Most of us are long time fans and we are enduring one of the few "bad" seasons the team has had in the last 20 years so there is significant difference of opinion and unfortunately some acrimony as a result.

If you are a relatively new fan of the sport(as i was back in 1998 when the Preds started) my advice is the learn the rules of the game and how the game flows, and read some of the more experienced posters who discuss things like strategy and how the team is executing the coaches system. Don't get bogged down in the discussions of how individual players are doing, that's usually where the acrimony creeps in.

Above all else, welcome! Glad to have you as a fan

 

[Armourboy]

Best way to put it is Nashville is a team in transition, and that includes the owners, the GM, the coaches, and the players.

Barry Trotz is the current GM after replacing David Poile who had been with the franchise since it started. Trotz was the first coach of the Preds and has essentially come full circle back to Nashville.

Andrew Brunette is in his first year as the coach of the Preds after Jon Hynes was fired by Trotz. Some of the assistant staff remain from last year however.

Players wise Saros, Forsberg, Josi and Ryan O'Rielly are the best players on the team. This past offseason just unloaded and bought out a couple of our larger contracts, traded some players off at the trade deadline and started rebuilding/retooling whichever you want to call it.

We have a mix of Vets and young kids who have been needing shots with other young guys looking to step in and get some chances too. Outside of Forsberg and Josi I wouldn't get too attached to anyone on the roster just yet, any of them could be gone in the couple of years. Only reason those two aren't a worry is that they have full No Movement Clauses ( NMC) and can't be moved without their approval.

Just sit back and enjoy the ride. As a new fan don't let the frustration you might see here get in the way. We just came off a pretty good run over the last decade, so going back to not being that good is taking some adjustment.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

I'm probably one of the "newer" posters here... I can remember "lurking" for a few years first, and reading a lot of posts and getting a feel for things, and then when I started posting I was already kind of "up to speed". You definitely don't need to take it as slowly as I did! More voices are welcome!

Many of the posters here have instead been Preds fans from Day 1 of Expansion, which is something us "newer" fans can never quite relate to! But you can still climb onboard. It's nice here because the traffic here isn't so heavy like it is for some of the "big market" teams, so you'll more easily get a sense of the "community" and how the other posters tend to think and react. Which is more manageable when you only have 20-30 "regulars" or whatever we have here, vs. some of the other teams on this forum who have hundreds and hundreds of people posting. That was definitely one of the selling features of becoming a Preds fan for me. The bigger market teams just have such enormous fanbases it becomes overwhelming. You can't separate the wheat from the chaff, or at least, it takes a lot of time to do it. Here, it's more manageable.

 

[Gnashville]

I'm probably one of the "newer" posters here... I can remember "lurking" for a few years first, and reading a lot of posts and getting a feel for things, and then when I started posting I was already kind of "up to speed". You definitely don't need to take it as slowly as I did! More voices are welcome!

Many of the posters here have instead been Preds fans from Day 1 of Expansion, which is something us "newer" fans can never quite relate to! But you can still climb onboard. It's nice here because the traffic here isn't so heavy like it is for some of the "big market" teams, so you'll more easily get a sense of the "community" and how the other posters tend to think and react. Which is more manageable when you only have 20-30 "regulars" or whatever we have here, vs. some of the other teams on this forum who have hundreds and hundreds of people posting. That was definitely one of the selling features of becoming a Preds fans for me. The bigger market teams just have such enormous fanbases it becomes overwhelming. You can't separate the wheat from the chaff, or at least, it takes a lot of time to do it. Here, it's more manageable.

I still have my T Shirt with just the logo and no name on it. It was the first one that was sold.

 

[BigFatCat999]

Hi

I've been getting into the NFL over the past year or so (Saints fan) and now I've decided I want to start watching the NHL also, I've spent the last week or so deciding which team to follow and I've landed on the Nashville predators, I wanted to pick a team that have never won a stanley cup, had colours I like, and a cool logo, I came down to either the predators or the sharks but i'm not keen on the colour teal.

So I need your help, what is the current state of play with the predators? Who are the best players? What does the future look like? who are our rivals? what are the best sites for the predators? I've tried using the predators reddit but for some reason non of my posts seems to be showing.

I support Manchester United here in England and I started following the saints around a year and half ago.

thanks

Welcome! Tell us about you. Where in the UK you from? Tell us about your sports knowledge. I was born in the 'other Manchester' Manchester, NH, USA. As for teams, I'll be honest, you picked a great time to be a fan of rebuilding teams. Gives you time to work on your sport and team knowledge. Right now the best player is Roman Josi from Switzerland, (Dad makes the honey for Toblerones!) followed by goalie Jusse Saros from Finland, and then Filip Forsberg from Sweden. Preds marketing and ownership call it gold not yellow. (Which is hilarious since in the team's jersey history they have had jerseys the color of both mustards; brown and yellow.) Working on owner #3 and the team is hovering at basement level. BUT! the games have been fun.

The Preds have been filtering in rookies to build up youth.

 

[Adz]

Welcome! Glad to have you here!

We have in jokes and superstitions and lots and lots of memories. Sometimes they can be explained, sometimes it's lost to time, sometimes you don't talk about Fight Club.

But come on in -- maybe you'll get enough pie this year to make it worth it but most nights we're gonna get our butts kicked.