(Ed. Note: As the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we’re bound to lose some friends along the journey. We’ve asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The bloggers and fans who hated them the most. Here is the good folks at Faxes From Uncle Dale, a Chicago Blackhawks blog, fondly recalling the 2016-17 Nashville Predators.)

(Again, this was not written by us. Also: This is a roast and you will be offended by it, so don’t take it so seriously.)

By Faxes From Uncle Dale

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve come here once again to bur….you know what, it doesn’t feel right this time.

Because… is this really a funeral? In most ways, it feels like the Nashville Predators were born this spring. As we all know, you’re not actually a hockey town, or even a section of civilization, until Canadian hockey media discovers that you’re a better place to watch a game than a freezing barn in Guelph, if that’s even a real place.

Welcome to the big time, Nash-Vegas. You’re now officially on the sanctioned list for Globe and Mail writers to come and get drunk and fall down.

(Other areas on the list include Bob McKenzie’s lake house, Winnipeg and Tony Twist’s St. Louis-style hot dog stand. Congrats, everyone. You’ve made it.)

You got lucky in a sense, though. Because Canadian writers refuse to acknowledge that college hockey is an actual thing – heaven for fend any hockey player receive anything over 7th-grade schooling – so they didn’t know your entire repertoire is lifted from college hockey fans. All your chants and traditions, taken from boozed-up frat boys who couldn’t get tickets to their school’s basketball team. But that’s OK, good artists borrow, great artists steal and whatever you are turn octopi into catfish.

Funny how that works, the way you moaned about Sidney Crosby trying to turn Subban’s head into fish-guts but mocked Wings fans doing the same about Shea Weber doing the same to Henrik Zetterberg. And now you are Wings fans, except your projectiles make for better eating … by the fans of the team that just beat you, apparently.

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You’ve become what you once abhorred. Still, you helped highlight how an entire country that is essentially built on this sport couldn’t develop a fan culture beyond, “Go Leafs Go!” So thanks for that.

Ah, but you were born in so many other ways this spring. Look at you, muzzling the NHL’s most galvanizing personality for the last two games of the Final. Just like the big boys! We look forward to you spending the summer poisoning the water around PK Subban with rumors of his teammates not liking him and fights with Peter Laviolette, before the big Subban-Muzzin trade of 2018. Don’t you love being a REAL team now? Soon you can employ a policy of only hiring coaches and GMs that speak “honkey-tonk” or “talk pretty.”

You grow up so fast. It was just yesterday you were happy to get into the playoffs or celebrating winning a series. And now you’re here blaming the refs for everything from your loss to the Titans continued mediocrity to the atrocity Kings Of Leon have become. Again, just like a traditional market. You are mere minutes away from Down Goes Brown making jokes about it every article he writes to mask his internal pain. You can almost see him doing a “Find/Change” from “Kerry Fraser” to “disallowed goal Game 6.” Isn’t being in the same house with Leafs fans now great? You should probably start tuning up your emotions for when Kevin Fiala wins a Cup somewhere else and brings it back to you after you chase him out of town because one writer saw him eat a pork shoulder once.

I suppose that’s the conclusion here. With everything you’ve been through, what we’ve discovered is your inferiority complex combined with a constant need to declare how special a fandom you are, conspiracy theories, your fear of personality with your players (and unveiled bigotry from your captain), terrible country music and barely middling rock bands to your underwhelming beer…you’re officially a Canadian city!

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