Rexrode: Buckle up, Nashville — Predators embark on historic night

The city keeps finding new levels of delirium, the team keeps finding new heroes, and the man who put the team together is awfully busy but still finds time to marvel at both.

“I try to take it in every day,” Predators general manager David Poile said of his team’s unprecedented playoff run and the way it has enthralled Nashville, a collaborative excellence he was told couldn’t happen here when he took this job 20 years ago.

Poile’s determination to take brief pauses and enjoy, like a bride and groom in the blur of their wedding day, is good advice for everyone Monday. Take this in, Nashville. The biggest sporting event in your history is at hand.

The Predators can advance to their first Stanley Cup Final by beating the Anaheim Ducks at Bridgestone Arena in Game 6 of their first Western Conference finals. This would be akin to the Tennessee Titans hosting an AFC championship game for the right to go to the Super Bowl, which has never happened.

This is a football town and state, so there will be folks who want to argue any number of big Titans and Vanderbilt games would still trump this. Those folks are wrong.

This isn’t just about the number of fans attending or watching — the Predators’ record 13.2 TV rating for Saturday’s 3-1 win at Anaheim in Game 5 would be a sturdy football rating, by the way — but about the stakes.

A Nashville major-league professional team has played for a championship once, the 2000 Super Bowl that the Titans lost to the St. Louis Rams, and opportunity No. 2 is 60 minutes away. Maybe a few more if there’s overtime.

This is the kind of run that can further entrench the sport of hockey in Nashville. And it has turned the eyes of this nation and others onto the unique and festive scene around Bridgestone.

Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland — they’re talking about Nashville. Media members from those countries are helping tell this story, in various languages. The Predators have well-paid players from all of those places helping create and extend the story.

It’s a really good one. It’s about a franchise that started play in 1998 and nearly moved away in 2007, now chasing the most revered trophy in professional sports.

It’s about a general manager who was there from the start, who found a way to create competitive teams despite financial limitations, who now has a powerhouse on his hands amid unprecedented fan interest and prosperity.

It’s about the coach Poile hired in 2014, after making the agonizing decision to fire longtime coach Barry Trotz. Peter Laviolette is one win from becoming the fourth coach in NHL history to bring three different franchises to the Stanley Cup Final.

Laviolette is putting on a motivational and tactical clinic while keeping it all business outside the locker room. His take on what he knows will be an emotional evening in Bridgestone is simply this: “We've got to make sure we show up and we do the work, and we're ready to play.”

This story stars Pekka Rinne, the 34-year-old from Finland who was the organization’s best goalie ever before these playoffs. He’s the best goalie in the world during these playoffs, as seen again in Saturday’s performance in Anaheim.

Afterward, Rinne smiled when asked about Monday night at Bridgestone.

“I mean, it’s a great opportunity,” he said. “That’s how I see it. Obviously it’s for sure our goal. You can’t help but think about it. You think about Monday and you think about the chance you have in front of you. Your dream is to play in the Stanley Cup Final.”

That dream is alive thanks to widespread contributions, from mainstays and role players — 16 Predators have scored goals, 10 have scored game-winning goals — and despite growing adversity. Star center Ryan Johansen needed emergency surgery Thursday for acute compartment syndrome of his left thigh, preventing permanent damage but knocking him out for the rest of the season.

Johansen and injured captain Mike Fisher missed Saturday’s game, so Frederick Gaudreau saw his first NHL playoff action. He did the job, and his top cohort this season with the minor-league Milwaukee Admirals, Pontus Aberg, had the winning goal. That’s a story.

“It’s something special for sure,” Gaudreau said, and that’s certainly the expectation for Monday’s scene around and in Bridgestone.

The Ducks beat the Predators there Thursday to break Nashville’s 10-game playoff winning streak at home. It was a good reminder that crowd noise can’t stop pucks from taking unwanted bounces.

So take it all in and be ready for anything. Nothing is assured, which makes it even bigger. And if it goes the way Predators fans hope, sweeter.

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