My Hockey experience (now) in Music City

I find it funny that once I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, I am MORE obsessed with hockey than I was in Michigan. How can this be? Michigan has a tradition of hockey, with the RedWings and that one hockey team that was in Houghton ages ago, that they still talk about. I move to the south, where collage football dullards run amok, and can't seem to separate myself from NHL.com, hockey blogs, and video game demos. The last part is a bit of an embellishment, as I have only played my demo version of NHL 10 on my PS3 about 5 times in the last month, so I would hardly call that obsessed. (you only get to play one period as either the Penguins or the DeadWings, so, yeah boring.) But I think it's the fact that I can finally latch on legitimately to an NHL team, due to the fact that they inexplicably have one here. I get to root for the predators, which is fine because of the fact that since their inception, they have been relatively successful. They have made the playoffs a bunch of times in their short existence. I never latched on to the Redwings when I lived in Michigan. The only explanation I can give is that, as a youngster, I knew nothing about hockey, but my best friend Pard played it. He told me that the Redwings suck and the Blackhawks were the best. So, I went along and for the rest of my life, I have told everyone that the Redwings suck. That's about it. The Redwings suck because...I said so? Yeah, that sounds right....

So as a life-long Redwings hater, it was easy to follow their rivals in the 90's and early 2000's, the Colorado Avalanche. Since everyone who liked the Wings hated the Avs, I naturally aligned myself with the enemy. This could have been any team Wings fans hated, but it happened to work out this way. When it became apparent that I would be moving to Nashville, I was aware of the fact that they had an NHL team here, and decided that I would look into changing allegiance. This was not that hard to do, as I don't think I saw a single Avalanche game (or highlight for that matter) last season. So I guess I'm a Predators fan now, and I love it. I love hockey, and now I have a team I can actually watch, and be surrounded by the fans, and not feel like I'm just rooting for a certain team just to piss someone else off. I live here, and I root for the home team. The Titans still suck though.

Consider this next part to be a completely different blog...maybe I should just make a different one so readers don't get discouraged by it's length? Part 2 coming next!