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.