NASHVILLE, TENN.—Ken Hitchcock, coach of the St. Louis Blues, is fond of saying no NHL team should expect to go into Nashville and come out with a win.

“It’s like the Colosseum in Rome.”

Why? Well, the team is good — even great, maybe — but the fans are better.

“They’re all dressed in one colour. It’s a very bright colour,” Hitchcock says of the Preds’ home gold jersey. “I don’t know why, but the seats are full for the start of the game. It’s obviously not a corporate crowd in the lower bowl. It’s very intimidating . . . because the building is full before the puck drops. Everybody is in their seat and it’s like they’re waiting for you.”

Christians, meet the lions.

“It’s a football crowd in a hockey rink,” concludes Hitchcock.

It’s reflected in team’s home record: 19-2-1. No club has fewer home losses this season.

The NHL had taken a fair bit of heat for putting a team in Nashville back in 1998, in one of those non-traditional markets. Hockey experts chortled when the in-game announcer had to explain icing and offside. Later, the Predators almost left. One owner was bankrupt and Blackberry billionaire Jim Balsillie, before he had his eyes on the Coyotes, was circling like a vulture.

But then something happened. The country music crowd embraced the NHL. Fans more attuned to football and NASCAR took to hockey. Nashville has become the perfect marriage between pucks and honky tonk.

“It’s not known in hockey circles. It’s not mainstream,” says Leafs coach Peter Horachek, an assistant in Nashville for 10 years. “It’s not Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. It’s not Chicago or New York Rangers. But it’s a hockey town now. It’s grown into a solid hockey place.”

Nashville is 21st in the league in attendance with an average crowd of 16,775 after 22 home games, a 98 per cent capacity at Bridgestone Arena,

“What a great place to go,” adds Horachek. “You stay downtown. You walk to the games. You walk to the honky tonks.”

Perhaps fuelled by those famous honky tonks surrounding the downtown arena, Predators fans started their own traditions, quite oblivious to the notion that these things just aren’t done in hockey.

“They do standing ovations before anything happens,” says Sean Henry, the Predators’ president.

They go wild during the third-period TV timeout, for no other reason than to get loud and support the Preds.

“The opposing team stops. They’re looking up, like, ‘What are they doing? Why are they on their feet,’ ” says Henry.

“I’ve never seen a city before (where) at a timeout, when the team needs a boost, (they) stand up and give them a standing ovation for 90 seconds,” says Horachek. “The whole team is going, ‘Come on, they got you, let’s go.’ It’s a special town that way. They’re vocal. They’re loud. They’re into it.”

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The announcement of each opposing player’s name is greeted by “You suck” — with “You suck, too” reserved for the opposing coach.

Take a penalty and fans give you the middle finger. Let in a goal and the netminder hears: “It’s all your fault.”

Fans are up on their feet a lot, says colour commentator Stu Grimson, the former NHL enforcer who retired as a Predator.

“My dad always has his arms crossed, folded across his chest,” says Grimson. “Typical Canadian, annoyed (because) people are getting up and down in front of him. They’re obstructing his view of the game. But that’s the way we do hockey in Nashville. We get pretty excited.”

The in-game experience includes a live band, and sometimes top singers grab the microphone. The Gatlin Brothers, Tim McGraw and Alice Cooper have sung between periods.

Now, it’s not like hockey will usurp football or auto racing as the top dogs in the city’s sporting community, but something else is happening. The travelling hockey fan is heading to Nashville, drawn by so many other things.

“You walk out of that building and you’re on Broadway,” says Grimson. “You’ve got all the honky tonks going. It’s exciting.”

Just about every bar has live music, and not just country. There’s the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Johnny Cash Museum. There’s the Grand Ole Opry, where so many musicians got their first big break. There’s a replica of the Greek Parthenon.

“You know the NHL tradition of the rookie dinner or the fathers’ trip?” says Grimson. “Nashville is now the kind of place where teams will schedule those trips — the fathers’ tip, the rookie dinner. They’ll build those things into the stay in Nasvhille.

“It gives you the sense it’s no longer just a stop on the circuit. It’s a unique place where people want to spend time.”