Bill Daly, quoted in an article in today’s Kansas City Star, has done a better job being clear and coherent about the Nashville Predators’ future by far than has his boss, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman:

“I’m not really in a position to comment on the status of Craig [Leipold]’s talks with anyone,” said NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly. “Whoever buys the team will have an obligation to make the team work in Nashville.”

I like the sound of that last sentence. Keep those ticket sales coming, y’all.

As often happens, I wholeheartedly agree with Liz Garrigan and her column in this week’s Nashville Scene:

The [mayoral] field is too fragmented, and it amounts to some bad juju for Dean and Briley. So, gentlemen, we know it’s not fair to ask one of the two best candidates in the field to abandon your pursuit. But politics is rarely a fair game. Once Briley’s TV is up and there’s a clear sense of your respective support, one of you needs to get out and throw your support behind the other. Do what’s best for your city. You wouldn’t have to make a pact with the devil—only with one another.

Look, guys, I’ve spent time with both of you on several occasions this year. I think you’re both smart, intelligent people who will lead this city in the direction I’d like to see it go. I wish you were in separate races because I’d likely vote for you both under those circumstances, but unfortunately you’re not.

I fear, as Garrigan does, that neither of you can win while both of you are candidates. If you are genuinely as inclined to act in the city’s best interest as I firmly believe you are, lock yourselves in the same room (leaving your staff members and consultants behind) sometime in the next week or so and figure this thing out. One of you needs to do the right thing for Nashville and leave the race. Whichever one of you does will earn a lot of respect–and future viability–by doing so. Both of you may suffer politically in the long run if you insist on charging ahead in futility.

Good insights here from pundits north of the border and south of Kentucky. First, from an unnamed author at TSN, Canada’s answer to ESPN:

You have a franchise in Nashville that has shown signs of not being long-term viable but it is not so destitute that it is an absolute foregone conclusion it can’t stay there and, more importantly, there are potential legal roadblocks to re-locating the franchise in the short term.

This is a pretty-fair take on the Preds’ vital signs, and I’m grateful to see it written by someone from Ontario. There’s been plenty of piling on, much of it exaggerated and some of it deserved, about how Nashville hasn’t supported hockey. The truth is that the Preds’  attendance and financial picture aren’t too far below a fair share of NHL clubs, but support, especially of the corporate variety, does need to increase (and soon).

Randy Horick, sports columnist for the Nashville Scene, reiterates a fact that has been easily overshadowed by all the drama that has ensued since the Preds’ sale possibility emerged in May:

If ticket sales push the attendance average above 14,000, the lease is unbreakable. And that means that, in effect, the real owners of the Predators are the residents and corporate leaders of the Nashville area. The next move literally is up to us.

I’ve quickly tired of this undulating pattern of good and bad news about the Predators’ fate, but I have not tired of watching my favorite team take the ice. Say what you will, this team does not have to go anywhere, and there is plenty that those of us here Nashville can do to see that that is exactly what happens.

One, Chris Mason, is stepping up to buy 10 season tickets to help keep the team in Nashville. Another, Paul Kariya, is likely departing for a franchise with more stability and, perhaps, a shot at the Cup next year.

Kariya, who turns 33 in October, isn’t getting any younger and has not yet won a championship, but Mason is right behind him at 31. Their circumstances are different because Mason is getting his first real shot at being a full-time NHL starter while Kariya is a perennial all-star, but this still looks like Kariya giving up on Nashville to me.

Many fans have correctly observed that Kariya has been more effective during the regular season during his time in Nashville than he has in the playoffs, so I don’t know that his departure is a knockout blow for the team’s chances on the ice. Where it hurts the Preds is that Kariya is a marquee star with plenty of name recognition, and it doesn’t help to see another big name drop from the roster in the wake of other recent departures.

Though it’s not a substantial cut of Mason’s upcoming salary, I applaud his dedication to the team and to the city. It’s long overdue since this sale “soap-opera” began in May that someone suiting up in a Preds jersey started sticking up for the city. Thanks, Chris, the feeling is mutual: We want you and your teammates to stick around a long, long time. While you’re at it, go out and bring back the Stanley Cup here to Nashville while you’re at it.

Local pessimist and Tennessean columnist Larry Woody has emerged from the shadows of Nashville’s sports scene today to declare the Predators a lost cause for the city. Woody makes several valid points to the effect that this is not a situation that any franchise or local community would like to find itself in, and I make no argument with him there.

On the other hand, Woody was equally cynical and pessimistic in the mid-1990s as the city arrived on the major league scene. Had Nashville taken Woody’s words as fact, there would likely be no Sommet Center, no LP Field, no Tennessee Titans, no Nashville Kats and no Nashville Predators today. Good thing we didn’t listen.

Woody is right that the Predators’ future in Nashville is facing an uphill climb, but I disagree that the cause is lost. He cites “not enough” fan support and “not enough” business support as the reasons that the Preds should close up shop and head north, but we’re not talking about a team that is drawing 6,000 fans here.

While attracting the largest individual season-ticket base in the league, Nashville outpaced seven other teams in NHL attendance this past season and had rising ticket numbers as the season went on. That’s a sign of progress for a sport only two years removed from a complete meltdown in its player lockout. What hockey in Nashville needs, I think, is a booster shot, not life support.

Give up if you like, Larry, but I believe hockey still has hope here. I guess we’ll see.

Mayoral candidate David bakes a mean upside-down cake (above). He surprised a crew of bloggers today that included Sean Braisted, Sam Davidson, Adam Kleinheider, Stephen Moseley and Mary Mancini and Freddie O’Connell of Liberadio with a home baked dessert as part of the lunch he hosted at his home in East Nashville. More details to come.

I’ve been meaning to weigh in on Jeff Woods’ column from last week’s Nashville Scene, the one where he takes the Campbellites (better known as the Church of Christ) to task. This is the column where Woods omits the words “from forty years ago” after “typical Christer:”

It is a loose network of independent churches with no creed, so it’s hard to generalize about its beliefs. But in addition to the standard conservative Christian articles of faith, the typical Christer thinks a church piano is the devil’s instrument, it’s wrong to celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ birth—and, oh yes, everyone but members of the Church of Christ is going to spend eternity in hell. [Emphasis on "typical" added.] Some church members dispute that last tenet as a mite judgmental, so we asked Dozier to explain.

“That isn’t true” that the Church of Christ thinks everyone except its own members is going to hell, Dozier says. “Probably years ago there were some who may have said that, unfortunately. They’re all dead, I think. We don’t believe that now.”

That’s good, because heaven would be a sparsely populated place if only Church of Christ members went. There aren’t many in the world—something less than 2 million. Nashville, though, has been blessed or cursed with a lot, depending on your point of view.

As a Church-of-Christ preacher’s kid’s kid with zero plans of preaching from the pulpit, I have plenty of frustration for, irritation toward and disagreement with the denomination, one I stopped attending in the fourth grade. Having attended a denomination-based school from grades one through twelve, though, I take issue with Woods’ use of the word “typical.”

In my experience on the Lipscomb campus, I’d say plenty of the students didn’t espouse at least the latter two of those beliefs, though some of the faculty did. There weren’t too many would-be dorks among the student body looking to champion the cause of accapella music, either, now that I think about it. To say that the beliefs Woods describes are representative of the typical church attendee today, I think, is inaccurate.

I won’t be voting for Carolyn Baldwin Tucker or for Buck Dozier this summer–unless, and Heaven help us if it happens, Dozier winds up in a runoff with Clement as his only opponent–but it doesn’t have much to do with their feelings about instrumental music. I personally just don’t think either candidate is representative enough of the more cosmopolitan and progressive community Nashville has become since the “typical Christer” started letting go of some of his or her exclusivism.

My only requirement, not that anyone asked, is a complete and utter willingness to keep the team here in Nashville. As usual, Nashville Post has the story on who might fit the bill:

The caliber of people the sources are talking about in Nashville include people such as Tommy Frist, who co-founded HCA, Cal Turner or maybe even Al Gore. Any one of them could operate under the model Martha Ingram, another who clearly has the resources, used in raising the funds for building the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, writing a big initial check but tapping friends in the community for the rest (to the chagrin of non-profits around town).

Frist has the financial resources to buy the team and could well convince some of the healthcare entrepreneurs HCA has spun off over the years to buy corporate tickets and sponsorships. And though Gore couldn’t carry the state in his presidential election bid, he may have enough clout to be the front man on a group.

I was thinking of Martha Ingram even before the news broke that a local bid was being discussed, so I’m not surprised to see her name pop up. Martha, I don’t (seriously) expect you to fund anything and everything in Nashville, but we need you and the rest of the crew above on this one. If you’ve somehow avoided falling for the Preds, at least help Nashville avoid a black eye from a franchise departure.

The entire hockey universe will be focused on Columbus, Ohio, tomorrow and Friday for the NHL draft. As scores of hockey reporters, team owners and executives, league officials and fans converge on the home of the Blue Jackets, The Tennessean reportedly will not have a presence there.

This is despite the fact that Southwest Airlines offers a $65 roundtrip fare from Nashville to Columbus and, oh yeah, our beloved Nashville Predators may very well be sold to a Canadian billionaire and shipped up north within a year or two.

With nearly everyone with any power and influence in hockey conveniently camped out a mere 379 miles from Broadway, wouldn’t it make sense for someone on the paper’s staff to cover the event and talk to insiders who may be hearing more rumors about the Predators’ future?

There’s a rumor that Richard Lawson of Nashville Post may visit Columbus because of the power brokers who will be present at the draft. Nashville Post has been all over the Preds sale developments since breaking the news in May, so I think this is an encouraging sign.

It can’t just be the fact that they share an elephant as their mascot. Is Ronald Reagan emerging as comparable figure in conservative politics to Bear Bryant in Alabama football?

It hasn’t hurt Republicans the way the Bryant’s legacy has impaired Tide football, particularly its coaching struggles in the 1990s and the 2000s, but could it? Could Reagan’s legacy ultimately cast a shadow so long and so deep that it prevents innovators and new ideas from emerging? Will it be a bad thing in the long run if the GOP becomes stuck in the 1980s philosophically?

Maybe it won’t. I think Reagan was a good president, and I would have voted for him twice if I had been of voting age. (I got my first chance to vote for a president in 1992.) But is slapping the “Next Reagan” label on every promising candidate doing more harm than good?

Maybe it isn’t Bear Bryant but Michael Jordan that I should be asking about. I have no love for the NBA, but the second coming of his highness via the “Next Jordan” has been rumored for nearly 20 years now. Has it helped Kobe Bryant or Lebron James to saddle them with this label?

At least on the topic of the future of the NHL in Nashville, Taylor Redden speaks for me. This comment was posted on ESPN.com today, and I couldn’t have said it better:

Hello my name is Taylor Redden and i just signed up so I could comment about this article and the happenings in general. From this point on I will not use proper capitalization, spelling, or grammar, so don’t flame me for it, its just the way I type.

i was born in hendersonville, tn, just 20 minutes from nashville. the earliest memory of hockey i can remember is writing a poem about hockey in the first grade for my teacher mrs. parker, which means i must have started playing roller hockey around kindergarten, and started skating before that. waaaaayyyy before the predators were a glint in your mothers eye. yes i remember the nashville nights at the municipal auditorium back in the day, but not quite old enough for the DIXIE FLYERS.

yes i grew up playing ’street’ hockey, the equivalent to your notherners ‘pond’ hockey. you guys have little one foot bar things for goals, we have trash cans. yours ponds are my parking lots. and all of this street activity lead into an actual roller hockey league. after all that happened, then we got the preds, and we rejoiced.

unfortunately, in high school i was forced/shamed into playing football, a sport that holds little meaning to me at all. if you didn’t play, you were a wus and not cool, and peer pressure is a witch… it was hard to swallow. but i still played some roller hockey….

luckily, BECAUSE OF THE PREDATORS, in my senior year we established a high school ICE HOCKEY team. i immediately quit football and any other extra curricular activities to focus on ICE HOCKEY. i was even fortunate to be the first ever captain of the hendersonville ice commando ice hockey team, a title a hold proudly to this day. it was a dream come true, something i had worked hard all my life. in my basement, the streets, everywhere i practiced hockey.

yah, in my teams first year, we sucked, BUT IT DIDNT MATTER TO ANY OF US, BECUASE WE WERE PLAYING REAL HOCKEY FOR OUR SCHOOLS PRIDE. there were barely 12 teams in the league at the time, now we have 20-something teams in the high school league, with three or four of them being from my hometown.

i feel like its been a blink of an eye since i wrote that poem, much less time since that opening night in october of 97.

AND YOUR GOING TO TELL ME REPEATEDLY I DO NOT DESERVE A TEAM? YOU GIVE ME 9 YEARS THATS IT? WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS I COACHED IN ROLLER HOCKEY? THEY AREN’T EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO BUY THERE OWN TICKETS YET!

you say you care about this sport, and you want it to grow, AND YOU WANT IT TO GET BETTER RATINGS THAN LAW AND ORDER RERUNS? then give it some time, the seed has been planted, now its time for some watering and care, then you might get some of these ‘rednecks’ to quit watching crappy TV and watch a sport that matters.

i dont know where this love for the sport came from (although i want to say wade redden is my long lost cousin and thats where i get my nak for the game), but i have it, and i spread it. everyone i take to a preds game down here gets addicted.

so please quit bashing the south, quit bashing nashville, and QUIT TELLING ME I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HOCKEY BECAUSE I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN TENNESSEE, BECAUSE HOCKEY IS ABOUT THE ONLY THING THAT MEANS A DAMN TO ME!

LONG LIVE THE PREDS!

As a Nashville native, I had friends who played youth hockey when I was a child, I played street hockey in my neighborhood, I began following the NHL in 1987, and I remained a fan when hockey vanished from ESPN in the late 80s and rejoiced when it returned in 1993. I began playing hockey in 1995 (three years before the Preds arrived) because I loved the NHL. I loved the speed, the hitting and the energy, and I loved that the sport originated from some place I’d never been before. I remember the Nashville South Stars of the early 80s, and I attended the very first Nashville Knights game in October 1989.

Redden is right. Hockey is growing is this community and getting stronger by the year. The NHL has indeed “planted a seed” here, and it would be a mistake to abandon its emerging roots only a few years into the process. As younger fans who grew up with the Preds having “always” been here become adults, support will only increase.

Plenty of sound arguments can be made that Canada deserves another franchise, but that doesn’t mean it has to be Our Team. Let’s keep the Preds where they belong, here in Nashville.

Kroger may need to ban David Briley, Karl Dean and Howard Gentry from shopping at its stores, because all three of them have large full-color ads in Out and About’s current issue.

I’m proud of all three of those candidates for aiming to represent all of Nashville if elected to serve as mayor. Kroger will have to make a judgment call about Bob Clement, on the other hand, who is featured on pages 12 and 14 waffling about his stance on domestic partner benefits for gay city employees.