Nashville Predators

The Nashville Predators bring big-league hockey to Music City, playing downtown at Bridgestone Arena where the crowd's gold-towel waves and catfish tosses have made 'Smashville' one of the loudest buildings in the league. Built from scratch as a 1998 expansion club in a nontraditional hockey market, the Preds have turned skepticism into one of the NHL's most passionate, tightly-packed fan bases. Known for stingy, structured defensive hockey and a knack for producing elite goaltending, Nashville plays with a physical, blue-collar identity that fits its country-music backdrop. The Predators remain one of the league's model expansion success stories on and off the ice.

The Predators were awarded to Nashville as an NHL expansion franchise in 1997 and began play in the 1998-99 season. The club steadily built into a perennial playoff contender in the 2010s behind franchise cornerstones like goaltender Pekka Rinne and defenseman Shea Weber. Nashville's high-water mark came in 2017, when a run led by newly acquired blueliner P.K. Subban carried the Predators to their first Stanley Cup Final, where they fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games. The franchise has yet to win a Stanley Cup but remains a consistent Western Conference threat.