How a canceled trip to a U2 concert sparked the Predators' run to the NHL playoffs (2024)

When you’re the team operations director of a hockey team, you’re used to putting out fires.

Flight delays, middle-of-the-night phone calls from players and staff, practice-time changes. If there’s a problem, you find a way to fix it … and there’s always an unforeseen problem.

On Feb. 16, hours after the Nashville Predators were clobbered 9-2 at home by the Dallas Stars in a third straight “horrible” performance coming out of their bye/All-Star break, director of team operations Brandon Walker got word from general manager Barry Trotz that he should cancel those 40 tickets he had purchased for $13,000 in December so players and staff could attend the U2 concert at the Sphere in Las Vegas on Feb. 18.

Well, that was not only easier said than done, but it was also impossible.

“I didn’t really care,” Trotz said.

The decision made by Trotz, the Preds’ “rookie” GM, and Andrew Brunette, the Preds’ first-year coach after guiding the Florida Panthers in 2022 to a Presidents’ Trophy and their first playoff series win in 26 years, created a wild domino effect for Walker. It meant the Predators’ fun three-day jaunt to Sin City between road games against the St. Louis Blues and Vegas Golden Knights would have to be reworked immediately. The Predators were leaving that day for St. Louis, but they would now return from St. Louis to Nashville for one day of practice before continuing their five-game trip.

The Preds had two planes in St. Louis because one was to bring corporate sponsors. The Preds ditched their normal first-class-outfitted plane and jumped on board the regularly configured commercial-style plane with sponsors back to Nashville. Walker booked a new Nashville-to-Las Vegas chartered flight for Feb. 19, then shortened the dates for 60 hotel rooms and rearranged buses and a bunch of meals.

And what about that block of U2 tickets he’d bought Dec. 7, three days after U2 extended its Sphere residency?

Walker couldn’t even flood secondary markets with the tickets because they were printed tickets that would be under his name at will call, and he wouldn’t be in town to pick them up. So Walker came up with a genius idea. He called his hotel’s VIP host, traded him the tickets and then transferred them to his name so the host could give them to some of his high-roller clients.

Walker isn’t sure yet what the team will receive in trade, and you guessed it: “I don’t care,” Trotz said.

Seeing U2 at the Sphere was on Trotz’s bucket list, too. Brunette is also a huge U2 fan. And the decision to cancel the Vegas vacation didn’t just affect the players; it stung the entire staff, which had been looking forward to the season respite for months.

“We were taking everybody,” Trotz said. “But there’s a certain standard and a certain way that you have to prepare, and our players’ focus after they got back from the All-Star break was awful.”

That decision turned out to be the defining, galvanizing moment of the Predators’ season.

The Predators went from 4 points out of a playoff spot to soaring on a 16-0-2, 18-game point streak, including five consecutive victories on that rearranged trip to St. Louis, Vegas, L.A., San Jose and Anaheim. They finished the season 20-5-3 from Feb. 17 on and have returned to the playoffs after missing the dance last season following an eight-year run, which included a trip to the 2017 Stanley Cup Final.

Sunday night, they’ll be in Vancouver to open a best-of-seven series against the Canucks.

“I’ve been on many teams, and trust me, this could have gone one way or the other after you make a harsh decision like this, but it speaks to the leadership group that we have,” said Brunette, who played more than 1,100 NHL games and scored the first goal in Predators history in 1998.

Brunette’s not just talking about captain Roman Josi and Stanley Cup winners like Ryan O’Reilly and Ryan McDonagh. He’s talking about guys like Filip Forsberg, first-year Pred but longtime NHLer Gustav Nyquist and Preds lifer Colton Sissons, who has played 618 games over 10 seasons for Nashville.

And Trotz, the original Predators coach who spent 15 years there, won a Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals and is third in NHL history with 914 coaching victories, was more than willing to take the risk, too, because of the trust he has in his players.

“But we knew this could have backfired quickly, but we were willing to take the risk,” Brunette said. “I love to have fun as much as anybody, but hockey has to come first, and that’s been always my mantra. As a player or as a coach or anywhere else in the game, hockey has to come first. You have to work first, and you have fun after.

“And hockey didn’t feel like it was first during that week, and I think we just had to make a point.”

The Preds came back from a 10-day break, and like most teams in the league, they were sloppy in their first game back yet got away with a win over the Arizona Coyotes.

Then, the players had their Super Bowl party and followed that up by getting plowed twice at home.

“These were crucial points to grab, and we stunk the joint up in front of our fans,” Brunette said. “Just wasn’t acceptable. I wasn’t very happy with them on the Monday after the Super Bowl. I got caught getting pissed off at them on the ice, and they had a little bit of a bag skate. But the message, and the urgency, wasn’t received, I guess you could say.”

Trotz couldn’t believe what he was watching during that seven-goal loss to Dallas, and like Brunette, he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact he was about to bring this team to Vegas for three days.

“Our mindset wasn’t right, and I didn’t feel that you should reward that, and I couldn’t accept the way we were playing,” Trotz said. “So, … ‘We’re not going.’”

Trotz went down to the coach’s room after the Stars loss and had a two-minute conversation with Brunette.

“It was on my mind anyways,” Brunette said.

Then Trotz met with Josi, O’Reilly, McDonagh and a couple of the other leaders to inform them Vegas was off.

“I probably wasn’t the most popular guy, but when you talk to them now, they get it,” Trotz said. “They weren’t probably the happiest, but you know what? I wasn’t happy, either. This is a good life lesson for everyone. I know everybody looked at it as though I just punished them. I didn’t punish them. I just said, ‘This is the standard we have, this is not acceptable, and you have to start acting like professionals. Because the way you’re playing is not fair to each other, isn’t fair to the organization and, most of all, isn’t fair to your fans.’ I said, ‘You earn respect and you earn privilege, and right now you haven’t earned the right to have fun in Vegas, so we’re coming home from St. Louis.’

“It’s like being at home and telling your kids, ‘Clean up your room, clean up your room, clean up your room.’ If they don’t do it, what are you going to do, take them to a movie?

“But what I love is our men responded.”

They sure did. Not coincidentally, many of the Predators’ leaders took off right from that first victory in St. Louis.

During their 16-0-2 run, Forsberg, who had a career year with 48 goals and 94 points, scored 15 goals and 28 points; Josi had 24 points and was plus-22; and players such as Nyquist, who had a 75-point season, O’Reilly and McDonagh erupted.

Juuse Saros went 12-0-2 in that stretch with a 1.92 goals-against average and a .932 save percentage. During that 18-game point streak, the Predators scored the third-most goals in the NHL (74) and gave up the fewest (33).

Nashville’s top scorers during 18-game point streak

“They went from easing back in the season and watching it slip away to being all business and playing with the standard we expect as an organization,” Trotz said. “Our leaders, our team, they understood. They go, ‘You know what? Hey, you’re right. We’re better than this.’ And then they started to show it. It wasn’t calculated or anything. It was just a reaction to what I call a standard and foundation of this hockey team.

“Like Bruno, I know this could have gone the other way, but I didn’t care. If you do what’s right, you’re never wrong. And that was right. That was the right decision for us. No matter how that would’ve played out, it was the right decision because what you’re doing is setting the standard. And if that was acceptable, then the next group behind them goes, ‘Oh, that’s acceptable. I don’t have to be a pro.’ It’s like in practice, if you want them to go from goal line to goal line and touch the line and you got guys that turn five feet from the line, well, what do you do?”

You set the standard by blowing your whistle.

The Predators are a physical, fast, relentless team that should be able to compete with the Canucks, who have had a marvelous year. But if Forsberg can keep up his star-studded play, if Saros can continue to be lights out, if Josi can continue to play the best hockey Brunette has ever witnessed from a defenseman these past few months, the Predators’ brass believes they have a real chance to not only win the series but also make a run.

The one area they probably aren’t as strong is overall depth.

“They’re four lines deep,” Brunette said. “But we’re going to need the Tommy Novaks, the Jason Zuckers, the Luke Evangelistas to score. We need the secondary scoring. We talk about that stretch of 18 games and how good our top players were, but without that secondary scoring, the fourth line scoring, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today.”

The Predators have had quite the season considering how honest Trotz was with the fan base that the expectation this season was a bit of a retool. Now the team is soaring into the playoffs as confident as any of the 15 others, and Trotz credits his leaders and Brunette, who he thinks “should be Coach of the Year.”

“You look at preseason rosters, you look at us, there’s not a person in hell that’s picking us to make the playoffs,” Trotz said. But we don’t play the game on paper. That’s the great thing about this game is that there’s a human factor and there’s a commitment factor and just the randomness of things that happen during the year that can define a team or take a team down.”

And what defined the Preds was standing up Bono and taking it personally rather than letting things go sideways.

(Photo of Gustav Nyquist and Filip Forsberg celebrating a goal: John Russell / NHLI via Getty Images)