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.”
GO DEEPER
How Andrew Brunette got the Predators to buy in: The film, the lost U2 concert, the roller coaster
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…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .