Mark WiedmerCatfish on ice.
No, it's not some New Age, pond-to-table delicacy served on a reconditioned roofing shingle from a See Rock City barn.
It is, however, Southern humor and sports passion at its best regarding the phenomenon that is the Nashville Predators, an NHL franchise on the eve of its first-ever Stanley Cup Final series against Pittsburgh.
Taking a page from the Detroit Red Wings - whose fans have thrown octopi on their home ice, especially during the postseason, since 1952 - the Music City cleverly has given that tradition a Down South twist, especially during these playoffs, though the first known catfish sighting on the Bridgestone Arena ice goes all the way back to 2003.
Regardless, Nashville is all in on this hockey thing, even if hockey fever in the South seems as unlikely as a grits festival in Minnesota.
"The way Nashville has embraced this team has overwhelmed (the Predators players)," said Chattanooga resident and lifelong hockey fan Kevin Gaffney, who grew up in New England cheering for the Boston Bruins. "It's why you hear the visiting teams all calling Bridgestone the loudest building in the NHL."
No one in the Scenic City may know the sport better than Gaffney, who played at Providence College before beginning a long career at Turner Broadcasting and then moving here a little more than 10 years ago and starting the Gaffney Consulting Group.
"I was with Turner when we brought the Thrashers to Atlanta," he said. "And I still hate it that they're gone. But I'm a huge Predators fan now. And they absolutely can win this thing. Pekka Rinne is the best goalie in hockey. Pete Laviolette is a great coach. And it's a great group of guys playing for each other and the city of Nashville."
When Cup play begins Monday at 8 p.m. in Pittsburgh, the (Nashville) Tennessean's gifted sports columnist Joe Rexrode will be in the Penguins' PPG Paints Arena covering the Preds, just as he has throughout the playoffs.
A native of Michigan, Rexrode got hooked on the sport in his youth, though he admitted in an email late last week that "I've never even been on ice skates."
He has been inside numerous NHL venues, however, and he wrote of the atmosphere at Bridgestone throughout these playoffs, "The scenes in and outside the arena keep getting crazier every time. It's really something to behold."
Rexrode also noted that this excitement is not new to this season. Upon going to work for the Tennessean a little over a year ago, just as the Preds were about to host and win Game 6 of their best-of-seven, opening-round victory over Anaheim, he observed, "I was immediately blown away by the knowledge of the Predators fans and their appropriate cheering, booing and general passion."
Of course, that general passion for tossing the occasional catfish onto the ice will undergo some serious scrutiny in Pittsburgh. According to several media outlets in the Pittsburgh area, Wholey's Fish Market in the city's Strip District is refusing to sell whole catfish to anyone with an ID that states he or she is from the state of Tennessee.
"We're not going to sell it to them," co-owner Dan Wholey told WPXI television earlier this weekend. "If their driver's license says Nashville or Tennessee, we just won't sell it to them. Catfish is for eating, not for throwing."
Of course, in that same piece, Predators fan Wes Collins told the station: "We start by strapping it to our backs. These things are big, they're 15 pounds. You've got to strap it from up underneath so the juices don't run down your legs."
As crazy and wonderful and creative as all this sounds, Gaffney readily admits it in no way approaches the yearlong passion the entire South reserves for SEC football.
"I was in a sports apparel store this week and I asked where the Predators Western Conference championship T-shirts were," he said. "They said I wasn't the first person to ask that. But it's clearly not a priority, at least not yet. It's amazing for a Yankee raised on hockey to see this. But in the South, sports fans get excited about two things: SEC football and SEC spring football."
Perhaps, but both Gaffney and Rexrode believe that could change where the Predators are concerned.
"Overall, they're a young team that should contend for the next four or five years," Gaffney said.
Noted Rexrode, recalling his childhood affection for the Red Wings: "Nashville right now feels to me like Michigan when the Wings finally got to the Cup Final in 1995 after a 29-year drought (they finally won their first Cup in 42 years in 1997). There's nothing like that first deep run."
If they're right, regardless of which team wins Lord Stanley's Cup this time around, all those catfish living near the bottom of that portion of the Cumberland River that flows within a few blocks of Bridgestone Arena could find themselves on an endangered list any spring now.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com