Nashville Predators are making a statement — after Barry Trotz made one to them | Estes

The Nashville Predators have forgotten how to lose, and strangely enough, I’m stuck in a memory about an SEC football team I covered years ago.

It wasn’t even a good team. Georgia, in 2010, lost four of its first five games. The Monday after the fourth defeat, coaches conducted an especially intense practice, outdoors in the pouring rain. That was rare. Mondays were light days. The workout was punitive, clearly; I knew, because I was there. The media was invited to watch — that never happened — and go tell a disgruntled fan base about it.

So, you wondered, was this for the team? Or was it for everyone else?

Which brings me back to the red-hot Predators, and how their seven-game winning streak started with the cancellation of an early trip to Las Vegas and a planned U2 concert, a message sent to the team after its 9-2 home defeat to the Dallas Stars on Feb. 15.

Punitive, too, but with an important distinction: We weren’t supposed to know about it. When the news got out anyway, it was embarrassing for the players.

But it tells us plenty about general manager Barry Trotz and coach Andrew Brunette.

It tells us these guys get it.

And the Predators haven’t always gotten it as a franchise. They’ve been very good at times, but here lately, they’d gotten a bit too comfortable being bad at other times.

Trotz isn't here for that. He has said so, but his actions speak louder.

This gambit with the concert? It was bold. It was urgent in a way that mediocre franchises wouldn't dare to be. Wasn’t something that rebuilding franchises do, either, which tells you that Trotz and Brunette like the hand they’re holding a little more than we might have thought. They do, it turns out, want to keep playing and see where the cards fall this postseason.

The fact that we weren’t supposed to know makes it even more genuine.

And you know what? It worked.

The Predators were written off by many (hand raised sheepishly) after that debacle against the Stars made it five defeats in six games. Then, out of nowhere, they started to make the doubters look ridiculous, going 5-0 on the ensuing road trip.

Thursday night’s 6-1 thumping of John Hynes’ Minnesota Wild at Bridgestone Arena pushed the Predators seven points clear of the nearest competitor for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference.

“You don't know which way they are going to go when you go through a little adversity,” Brunette said of the Predators after the victory. “I didn't know the group. You kind of know them over 40 games, but you're not sure . . . Everybody stepped up a little bit, and everybody started pulling the same rope, and I think they are enjoying doing it.”

As Brunette said, the season was hanging in the balance after the loss to the Stars. Could have gone either way, and the other way would have been easier. Might have been better, too, for the Predators’ long-term ambitions had they folded up shop this season. There would have been no more pressure, and Trotz could have gone back to selling pieces and grabbing what he could before the NHL trade deadline.

He still might do some of that. This winning streak has made a playoff spot more feasible, but it hasn’t changed the circumstances all that much. You’d still have to see a ceiling for this team. It's still not a roster that seems capable of seriously challenging for a Stanley Cup.

But hey, who knows? We certainly didn't the past two weeks.

“It's all about the player, the leadership in that room,” Brunette said. “If they want to hunker in and get at it, they will. And if they don't, they won't. That speaks tremendously about the leadership in that room, how much they care.”

The stunning turnaround of these past two weeks was a harbinger that shouldn’t be ignored. It's not just about this season. It's about Trotz and Brunette establishing a new standard. The Predators' players were challenged to meet that in recent weeks, and they've responded far better than could have been envisioned.

On the ice, it has been as encouraging as anything this franchise has pulled off in some time.

That’s way bigger than a missed concert. “Says a lot about the character,” captain Roman Josi said.

Says a lot about this franchise's future, too. What's happening now, it's only the beginning.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Predators' streak a credit to Barry Trotz, Andrew Brunette