Earlier this week, we presented a look at hockey in Alabama through the filter of three teams: The Southern Professional Hockey League's Huntsville Havoc, founded in 2004, and the Birmingham Bulls, who returned for a third time in 2017; and the NHL's Nashville Predators, who draw a good portion of their fans from the state.
The Predators have positioned themselves as the team of the South and have provided a template for other Southern teams to follow by unabashedly embracing their community's roots while selling the experience of Nashville even more than the hockey itself.