Score one for Predators voices Pete Weber and Brent Peterson

The Tennessean

Brent Peterson, right, will be replaced in the Predators radio booth by former Predators defenseman Hal Gill.

Brent Peterson lost it a few times Monday night, starting with the call.

Peterson is the Predators radio color commentator on 102.5-FM and its affiliates. Pete Weber sits next to him and does the play by play. When Calle Jarnkrok found Colton Sissons with a perfect pass and Sissons buried it – the goal that earned the Predators their first Stanley Cup Final – Weber was ready with the call.

So was Peterson.

“Here is Jarnkrok, across for Sissons …” Weber said, his voice rising to indicate a developing situation on the ice.

“He scores!” Peterson said.

“A scooooooore!” Weber said.

“Oh my goodness!” Peterson said.

And so on. They shared the call. Two guys who have been waiting to be involved in a Stanley Cup Final since their NHL careers started in very different places in the late 1970s.

“Sometimes I talk when I’m not supposed to,” Peterson said of that moment. “Just lost my composure a little bit there. Then I decided to cry like a little baby.”

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And actually, it was perfect. The whole thing. Especially for Peterson, Weber and others who have been with the Predators from the beginning, a journey to Monday’s start of the Stanley Cup Final that took two decades and must have felt like millions of miles.

That group includes general manager David Poile, assistant general manager Paul Fenton, senior vice president and senior adviser Gerry Helper, vice president of service and retention Britt Kincheloe, senior director of broadcast and entertainment Bob Kohl, TV analyst Terry Crisp, TV play-by-play announcer Willy Daunic, equipment manager Pete Rogers and team photographer John Russell.

The New York Times this week featured the saga of Nat Harden, unsuccessfully trying to sell Predators season-ticket packages in 1997 and getting paid $7 an hour for it. He’s now senior vice president of ticket sales, premium sales and youth hockey.

An event like the Predators making the Stanley Cup Final is going to come with a lot of great stories like that, and considering what Peterson and Weber have been through, theirs should be told.

Weber, 66, is just three years removed from a heart attack. Peterson, 59, has been fighting Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system, for 14 years. He has a son-in-law, the father of two of his four grandchildren, who recently had a brain tumor removed and is fighting for his life.

Aaron Smith and his family – wife Kristin is one of three children of Peterson and his wife, Tami – were in Nashville for Games 3 and 4 of the Western Conference finals against Anaheim, but now they’re back in Kansas City so Smith can go through chemotherapy. Doctors were able to remove 85 percent of the tumor, then came radiation treatments amid worsening memory for Smith.

“It’s tough,” Peterson said. “But they’re tough people.”

They said the same of Peterson when he was the No. 12 overall pick of the Detroit Red Wings in 1978, coming out of Calgary, Alberta. He was a hard-checking, defensive forward through 11 seasons with four teams.

He first met Weber while playing for the Buffalo Sabres in the early 1980s – their interactions mostly consisted of those quick, between-periods interviews on Sabres broadcasts.

“Always very matter-of-fact,” Weber recalled of Peterson in those interviews with a chuckle. “Very earnest.”

Peterson got into coaching after his playing career and was hired to be part of Barry Trotz’s first staff with the Predators. He was essentially the team’s defensive coordinator and had more than one opportunity to move on as an NHL head coach. In fact, he said he had an offer he was ready to accept before the club in question mandated that he keep one of the assistants from the previous staff.

“You have to have your people,” Peterson said, “or it won’t work.”

The Parkinson’s diagnosis came in 2003, and Brent and Tami kept it to themselves for more than a year. He told the Predators in 2004 and kept coaching, but by 2011 he couldn’t do it anymore. Trotz and Poile tried to talk Peterson into staying, but his muscle control was deteriorating.

He stayed with the club in a coaching aide role, and then came the surgery in late 2011 to put probes into his brain. The procedure, called deep brain stimulation, dramatically improved his ability to move and reduced his tremors.

“It has helped a lot,” said Peterson, who has raised nearly $800,000 to fight Parkinson’s and has a site called petersonforparkinsons.org. “But this is still an incurable disease and it’s still progression. You slur your words a little bit more each year.”

But in the 2014-15 season, Peterson tried his hand at broadcasting. This a few months after one of the worst days in organization history – Feb. 6, 2014, the day Weber suffered a heart attack and Poile was hit with a puck before a road game against the Minnesota Wild.

Poile lost sight in his right eye. Weber was back on the call 33 days later and says he has had no issues since then. He and Peterson have been together on radio for the past two seasons, and Peterson credits Weber’s sense of humor for helping him maintain perspective.

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That’s Weber’s style on the air, too, in a career that has included color commentary for the L.A. Kings and play-by-play for the Seattle Supersonics. He has a classic play-by-play delivery, but he has fun, such as when he perceives a “makeup call” from an official and calls it a “Mary Kay moment.”

“Sometimes it’s good to let people know you’re not doing brain surgery,” Weber said. “This whole sports thing is something to be enjoyed, and not to be taken to unreasonable extremes.”

Helper worked with Weber in Buffalo and Crisp in Tampa Bay and was “the driving force,” Weber said, behind bringing both of them to Nashville. Weber and Crisp were the initial announcing team and spent much of their time teaching “Hockey 101” classes to folks.

“Petey doesn’t have an ego that gets in the way of having fun,” Crisp said of Weber. “All the way down the line, I was blessed to work with him. And I would love to be able to listen to him say, ‘Can you believe it? The Predators have just won the Stanley Cup!’ That’s my wish more than anything.”

Weber invented “Go ape!” after a winning Mike Fisher goal in last year’s playoffs and has used it a few times during this run, but as time expired Monday he went with this: “And there we go, folks! Sit down if you need – the Nashville Predators are going to the Stanley Cup Final!”

Peterson was overcome with emotion, so much so during the postgame show that host Darren McFarland said he was trying not to look at him so he could keep himself composed. They got through the show.

“Then I ran into my wife,” Peterson said, “which didn’t help.”

And nearly 24 hours later, Peterson was watching Game 6 between Pittsburgh and Ottawa, getting prepared for the final assignment. He has had to cut down his travel significantly – Chris Mason has been doing color on the road during this run – but Peterson plans to do every game of the Final. And enjoy every minute.

“It just hit me now again, like, ‘Wow, we’re in the Stanley Cup Final,’” he said Tuesday night. “You think of all the people who did so many things over the years to make this possible.”

That’s when Peterson started losing it again. But he was able to get this out: “These players, they did this and I can’t thank them enough. I wish they knew what it means to all of us.”

Reach Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.