Adam Vingan

avingan@tennessean.com

MONTREAL — Shea Weber woke up June 29 to a warm, sunny day in Kelowna, British Columbia. He boarded his boat and placed his phone in the glove box as usual. It was the NHL offseason. There weren’t many reasons why Weber would be needed.

When he retrieved his phone a few hours later, it was filled with roughly 50 texts and a couple of voicemails.

“Is it true? Is it real?” one text read. Weber didn’t understand until he scrolled down to a message from Predators general manager David Poile. He then knew a trade was imminent.

“If your GM calls you in the middle of June and there’s a bunch of texts, I think everybody in the league probably thinks that,” Weber said during an exclusive interview last month at the Canadiens' practice facility in Brossard, Quebec.

The veteran defenseman, who had spent his entire 11-year career with the Predators, learned he was now a member of the Montreal Canadiens, traded for superstar defenseman P.K. Subban.

Weber, known for being unflappable on the ice, was blindsided. His life had abruptly and unexpectedly changed.

“How am I going to get everything figured out?” Weber thought in the immediate aftermath. “There’s so much racing through your head. How am I going to sell my house? How am I going to find a new house? How am I going to get all of this done? I’ve got so much to think about. There’s just like a million things going through your mind."

In the past six months, Weber overcame that initial anxiety and acclimated to his new situation. On Tuesday, he returns to Bridgestone Arena for the first time in one of the most highly anticipated games of the NHL season.

The Predators will honor Weber, their greatest player and captain of six years, and a rousing reaction should deservedly follow.

“I’m not going to lie — there’s probably going to be a lot of emotion,” Weber said. "I’m human. I spent a lot of time there. I put a lot of hard work and effort into everything I did there. Obviously built a lot of friendships and relationships even outside of the game with people there."

He didn't want to be traded

Hockey, like any professional sport, is a business, and NHL players and general managers often default to that explanation whenever discussing roster-related decisions.

That doesn’t make the sting of those decisions any less painful, especially one with the magnitude of the June 29 Weber-Subban blockbuster. Not only did the trade include the NHL’s two highest-paid defensemen, but also two homegrown players who were cornerstones of their franchises.

“It’s emotional and it’s empty at the same time,” Poile said. “(Weber) would never remember what I said ... because all he hears is, ‘You’ve been traded.’ … He didn’t want to be traded and we weren’t looking to trade him. Those things are very difficult when you feel you’re a foundation block to a team, the team feels that you’re a foundation block, and all of a sudden, the team decides to go in a different direction."

“I can remember most of it, actually,” Weber said of his conversation with Poile, declining to elaborate. "You’re in shock, so it was definitely unexpected. I definitely remember it.”

Calls flooded Weber’s phone. Not much was said on any of them. The news reached Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne in Finland, where he was waiting to board a short flight home from Helsinki. Separated by a 10-hour time difference, Rinne, who played with Weber for eight full seasons, did what he could to offer support to his now ex-teammate.

“He was emotional,” Rinne said. "He was still just struggling to put everything together, which is understandable. You could tell it was so much to handle. … After that period, we talked a few times, and by that time, he was already way more comfortable with the whole idea and more settled in.”

The calm arrived once Weber moved into his new home and connected with his new teammates, but it wasn’t an experience that he ever expected to endure.

“I wanted to be in Nashville for my whole career," said Weber, who received a 14-year contract in July 2012 after the Predators matched an offer sheet that he signed with the Flyers. "Especially a team where you’re drafted and you spend so much time, you want to bring the Stanley Cup to that city. That’s your goal. … That didn’t happen.

"But now I’m going to have to focus the rest of my career that I have here in Montreal in bringing the Stanley Cup back here and making the people of Montreal happy."

A welcome-to-the-team moment

Inside Bell Centre, Weber jerseys dotted the concourse. At a merchandise stand, Anthony Ceolin removed one from a hanger and made a purchase during a mid-December game between the league-leading Canadiens and Boston Bruins,

"He fits well with the team," Ceolin said of Weber. "He's a good role model. I was happy about the trade."

Canadiens fans generally didn't share that sentiment initially when processing the mega-swap of Subban and Weber.

They struggled to comprehend why the Canadiens wanted a player who is 4 years older, slower and not as exhilarating to watch. But Weber's fast start — 17 points in his first 20 games — endeared him to a highly skeptical fan base and introduced Montreal to his mighty slap shot and no-nonsense style.

There are still converts to be had, though. Dustin Beebe, a Canadiens fan of three decades, wore his No. 76 Subban jersey to the game that night, as did countless others at Bell Centre.

"I was disappointed and not sure what to think of it at the time," Beebe said of the trade. "I definitely hated losing P.K. I know Weber is a great player, but I was definitely disappointed to see Subban go."

Julie Martin renounced her fandom the day after the trade in a widely shared post on social media, leaving a jersey outside Bell Centre with a handwritten message scrawled across the fabric.

“You can have this once-beloved jersey back,” it read. "I have no more use for it. … Hope P.K. Subban thrives in Nashville! He deserves better, and so do (Canadiens) fans. Stop making such huge mistakes.”

Events that would be disregarded elsewhere are often magnified within the Montreal fishbowl. On July 17, Subban landed in Nashville, meeting fans and enthusiastically taking the stage at Tootsie’s to sing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Weber didn’t make his first formal appearance in Montreal until Aug. 9 at Canadiens coach Michel Therrien’s charity golf tournament.

“Where’s Shea Weber?” an Aug. 2 column in the Montreal Gazette asked.

There was immense pressure on Weber to instantly contribute in games. Early opinions of the trade heavily skewed in the Predators’ favor, though Weber ignored the avalanche of analysis.

"I'm confident in what I bring on the ice," Weber said. "Obviously the management saw something that they liked as well, and I'm not going to change anything. I'm just going to bring that here and just hopefully try to help the team win. I wasn't focused on what people thought or anything outside of it.”

Before the team’s Oct. 18 home opener, Canadiens players were individually introduced. When Weber stepped onto the ice, the Bell Centre crowd greeted him with a standing ovation. Weber's eyes glistened with tears, a rare display of emotion from the normally stoic defenseman.

“Honestly, I just wanted to go play a first shift and not screw up,” Weber said. "That was the first thing I was thinking. But to go out there, it was pretty special. I had no idea what to expect, and it was an unbelievable feeling to be welcomed to a new team, a new city like that. Just to have that feeling was pretty special. It was kind of like a welcome-to-the-team moment."

Fitting in perfectly

Andrew Shaw is the type of player whom Weber is paid to keep quiet.

Shaw, traded to the Canadiens five days before Weber, previously was the Blackhawks’ resident pest. He and Weber regularly clashed whenever Nashville and Chicago met, with Weber even cracking two of Shaw’s ribs during a particularly spirited battle in front of the net during the teams’ 2015 playoff series.

The verbal barbs traded between the two in those games are largely unprintable, which makes Shaw’s nickname for his new teammate even more striking — “Dad.”

It’s appropriate. Weber has been a father figure for most of his career, having natural leadership qualities that players throughout the NHL, including his new teammates, reverently speak of.

“He’s been a captain in this league for a long time,” Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher said. "The leadership that he brings, the experience that he brings, it’s had a settling component to our group. … He has that presence. He has that respect of his teammates in this locker room that if he says or does something, people are going to want to follow him.”

Montreal got Weber as part of a makeover to become a tougher team. But it also needed Weber’s calming influence after last season’s second-half meltdown. The Canadiens started 9-0-0 but crumbled following the loss of MVP goaltender and emotional leader Carey Price to injury, losing 37 of their last 56 games and missing the playoffs.

“We feel like Shea has come in right away and fit in perfectly, but also added what we feel might have been lacking both on and off the ice,” Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty said.

Integrating into a new locker room after more than a decade in Nashville was an adjustment for Weber, who hosted Canadian Thanksgiving dinner at his suburban home and joined the team’s fantasy football league. But he also had to find his place among the Canadiens’ leaders.

For six seasons, Weber was the Predators captain and center of the team’s leadership group. Although he is one of the Canadiens’ four alternate captains, he is no longer the main voice.

“I knew once I got traded here that it’s a whole new group of guys,” Weber said. "They have their leaders. They have their captain. It’s his team, and I’m going to try to help him in any way that I can. I’m going to support him in all of his decisions in the way I would expect anyone to help me when I was a captain in Nashville.”

Pacioretty, in his second season as captain, credited Weber for making him better in that role. The two have spent considerable time discussing how Weber handled being captain in a market with significantly less pressure and how Pacioretty can impart those lessons into how he conducts himself.

“In my eyes, I think he was one of the best captains in the league in Nashville from what I’ve seen,” Pacioretty said. "He stepped right in, and that leadership carried right over to here.”

At the top of the list

Weber deflects personal attention and is reluctant to discuss his legacy. But it’s indisputable that he is the most important player in Predators history and among the most accomplished athletes in Nashville history.

The 31-year-old was the Predators’ first individual success story, a player drafted and developed by the organization who matured into one of the NHL’s best at his position. The accolades — two Olympic gold medals, three Norris Trophy nominations, five All-Star Game selections — confirm that.

“When I think of the Nashville Predators, he’s right at the top of the list for me,” Poile said.

Weber’s arrival coincided with what Poile called the Predators’ “competitive time,” when they became a regular playoff participant and a team with realistic championship goals, drastically changing the course of the team.

“I think this franchise would’ve been in a lot of trouble if not for Shea Weber,” Poile said. “It all started with Shea. Shea could do it all. You couldn’t ask for a better role model to have as a captain, as well as one of the top players in the NHL and a quality person."

Weber is now immersed in the Montreal way of life — his two infant children attend bilingual daycare and he's learning French — but he maintains ties to the Nashville community. He is committed to the 365 Pediatric Cancer Fund that he and Rinne formed three seasons ago, and he regularly texts with his former teammates, whom he counts as his closest friends.

"Nashville's a great city," Weber said. "It was a great place to live. The people there are unbelievable. ... I'm in a great city here where I love it. Obviously it's way different, the culture and everything, but when I move back home after my career's done here, I'm going to miss here, too. I'm fortunate to have played in a good city and now playing in another good city."

Tuesday will be bittersweet. Instead of driving to Bridgestone Arena from his former Green Hills home (which is now occupied by Predators center Ryan Johansen), Weber will take a short walk from the downtown hotel hosting the Canadiens. He won't dress in the Predators locker room that used to be filled with pictures of him, but the nondescript visiting room.

From there, Weber will step into an emotionally charged atmosphere.

"I’m hoping we can win and make it that much better,” he said.

Reach Adam Vingan on Twitter @AdamVingan.

PREDATORS vs. CANADIENS

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

TV/radio: Fox TN/102.5-FM

SHEA WEBER'S PLACE IN PREDATORS HISTORY

Games played: 763 (2nd)

Regular-season home games as a Predators player: 383

Goals: 166 (2nd)

Power play goals: 80 (1st)

Points: 443 (3rd)

All-Star Game appearances: 5 (1st)



