Nashville Predators hold a laughable banner raising ceremony in home opener

The Nashville Predators had every right to celebrate their 2017-18 season, but the way they did so was pretty bizarre and really awkward for everyone involved.

The Nashville Predators raised three banners on Wednesday night before their home opener against the Calgary Flames, all commemorating the fantastic regular season that they had last year. They raised a banner for winning their first ever Presidents Trophy. Well deserved. Then one for their first ever Central Division championship. Little weird and redundant but division championship banners are important as well. Finally, first ever… regular season Western Conference Champions? What?

Regular season Western Conference Champions? First of all that’s entirely redundant considering the banner right next to it acknowledges they won the President’s Trophy as the best regular season team in the league, and second of all that award doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as “regular season Western Conference Champions”. Getting the top overall seed in the conference only awards you with playing the second wildcard team, nothing else. Do you expect anybody to take that thing seriously?

The Vegas Golden Knights were the Western Conference champions last season. They beat the Winnipeg Jets in the Western Conference Finals (who Nashville failed to beat), and they played and lost to the Washington Capitals in the Stanley Cup Finals. They earned the right to raise a banner for that.

https://twitter.com/evanposocco/status/1049862596248010754

The only banner that makes even a little bit of sense to raise is the Presidents Trophy, because even if the award has become kind of a joke over the last few seasons, it’s still an accomplishment to be proud of. But you can only do it if it’s the first time you’ve won it, and in Nashville’s defense it was, but still expect to get laughed at when you do that. I’ll even give them a pass for the Central Division banner because it’s their first time, but it really should’ve been raised before the game.

Having a big pre-game ceremony for these banners is odd in itself, especially posing with the Presidents Trophy. Nobody really cares, and you’re just opening yourselves up to be ridiculed down the road. Having a ceremony last season made sense so they could raise the actual  “Western Conference Champions” to recognize their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2017, but this was ridiculous.

It doesn’t even stop with just raising the banners either, Nashville is tripling down on these banners and is giving away replicas for the next three home games. So if you’re really proud of them for getting the top seed in the Western Conference, be sure to be in attendance on Saturday Oct.13 against the Islanders so you can have your own meaningless banner to hang

The Predators ended up losing their home opener to the Calgary Flames with a 3-0 shutout on the back of a 43 save performance from Flames goaltender Mike Smith. But they had no chance of ever winning that game after a ceremony like that.