The Nashville Predators had a fantastic regular season last year. They finished at the top of the standings in the NHL and looked to be serious Stanley Cup contenders. Unfortunately for them, they hit the golf course earlier than expected, losing in 7 games to the Winnipeg Jets in the second round.
Fast forward to Tuesday, when the Preds hosted their home opener and celebrated their accomplishments from last season with a banner raising ceremony, as they should.
They were Presidents’ Trophy winners, after all, finishing the regular season with 117 points, a difficult feat that really doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. And so they made a banner to commemorate it. Fine.
The second banner, Central Division Champions, could be considered an odd choice. But hey, for a franchise that doesn’t have any real championship banners hanging from the rafters, we can let that one slide. The Central Division was arguably the toughest division last year anyway, so fine.
But the third banner, Regular Season (in fine print, no less) Western Conference Champions? Get the fuck outta here! That’s not even a real thing! We all know who the 2017-2018 Western Conference Champions were, the Vegas Golden Knights. They got the Campbell Bowl. They played in the Stanley Cup Final. It’s on video, it happened.
On top of being a total embarrassment to the team, the banner actually doesn’t even make sense. It implies that they had the Western Conference’s best record, which I’m pretty sure they covered with the Presidents’ Trophy banner. You know the one they got for finishing with the best record in the entire league…
I didn’t realize NHL teams were giving out participation awards now, and by the looks of it, there’s a lot of people that feel the same way. Over the last few days, the Predators have been getting relentlessly mocked for their dumb ass banner choice, and here are some of our favourites.
Of course, we can never forget about those Colts banners.
Or the rest of the NHL teams that have raised these ridiculous regular season banners. But that’s not what were talking about right now.
