NASHVILLE — Seven o’clock on a Tuesday, and the gold-clad, goose-calling, Tim McGraw-crooning fans of the Nashville Predators are offering an updated primer in Southern hospitality.

One by one, the starters for the Predators’ victim on this night, the Colorado Avalanche, are announced, and one by one, each is advised by the frothing crowd that — in somewhat more colorful language — he is not good at his job, not good at all. The Avalanche’s coach, Patrick Roy, is then introduced, and he is told the same, with a bit more fervor.

Bridgestone Arena, where the Predators skate, is a spaceship of a building perched on a stretch of Broadway downtown that evokes a hillbilly Bourbon Street — all boot joints and neon guitars and honky-tonks. By the opening face-off, all that energy is sucked inside, creating a rowdy atmosphere for a rowdy team, the N.H.L.’s unlikely juggernaut.

The Predators have lost only five times at home all season, but they have not lost much on the road, either. After missing the playoffs the past two seasons, Nashville has upended the Western Conference establishment, barging into a realm usually occupied by the likes of Chicago and Los Angeles to seize the best record in the league. On pace for a franchise-high 116 points, the Predators, who play the Rangers on Monday at Madison Square Garden, have 89, 2 points ahead of Montreal and Anaheim.