After an unlucky 13 years, Music City finally has a hockey hit.
Nashville, home of the hard-working, defensively diligent Predators, is heading into the second round of the play-offs for the first time in franchise history.
The Preds, an anonymous bunch save for Shea Weber, their hard-shooting defenceman, and Pekka Rinne, a Vezina nominee in goal, finally got out of the first round.
Nashville have made the play-offs five times in the previous six years only to exit a handful of painful games later. The toughest lesson in the fine line between first-round defeat and Stanley Cup success came last season, when the Preds were less than a minute away from heading back home with a 3-2 series lead on the Chicago Blackhawks.
But the Hawks scored in the final seconds, then again in overtime, and the Preds lost the next game, too, then watched Chicago roll to their first championship in 49 years.
But all of that play-off failure is now in the past for the Preds. In dispatching the Anaheim Ducks in six games, Nashville have a few days to rest and reflect on their status as one of the NHL's final eight contenders for the cup. While the Preds do not boast much in the way of firepower or scoring stars, they are a team built for the play-offs: Great goaltending; a solid, physical defence corps, led by Weber and Ryan Suter; four lines that might not light it up but contribute goals consistently - the Preds scored 22 times in the six games against Anaheim with 12 players collecting at least one goal.
The addition of two-way centre Mike Fisher, a second-tier star, seemed to spark David Legwand, an encouraging development for a team that will need to squeeze as much offence as it can from every player on every line. In true all-for-one fashion, the Preds got a game-winning goal from all four lines against the Ducks, a testament to their team play and top-to-bottom depth.
Nashville are a late-1990s expansion team. While Sun Belt teams such as Atlanta, Florida, Phoenix and Tampa Bay have flirted from success to failure (Tampa Bay even won a Stanley Cup), Nashville have soldiered on, waiting for a big play-off breakthrough.
Will their long-awaited advancement to the second round be a springboard for more play-off success or are the Preds setting themselves up for another cruel post-season lesson? Either way, it is progress and the ever-advancing Predators will patiently wait for their chance to pounce.
sports@thenational.ae