NASHVILLE — In the beginning, before the Nashville Predators sank their fangs into a city that adored hockey but just didn’t know it yet, there was a kiosk. Nat Harden perched there, outside the food court of the CoolSprings mall in suburban Brentwood, eight hours a day, five days a week during the 1997 holiday season and tried to sell a sport that he had never seen in person and a team that had no players.

One television at the booth showed hockey highlights, while another ran a loop of Shania Twain’s music videos. Harden, who had recently graduated from Mississippi State, followed instructions to promote the game’s speed, but it did not impress him much back then. In college, he had been so indifferent to hockey that upon returning home one night and finding a roommate and some friends engrossed in the 1994 Stanley Cup finals, he ducked out.

To watch “Saved by the Bell.”

Harden’s entry-level position with the Predators paid $7 an hour, and he would have earned 1 percent commission on season-ticket packages had he, in fact, sold any.