NHL sees hockey love build in South

FRANKLIN, Tenn. -- Children fill every bench and sprawl over the floor lacing up hockey skates, eager to hit the ice. Parents hold jackets and patiently wait. Just another typical Saturday morning at the rink.

Except this is the middle of Tennessee.

Atlanta may not be able to hold onto an NHL team, and ponds in the South are for fishing and swimming. But the league's Southern strategy is paying dividends where children now dream of playing in the NHL and winning Olympic gold medals.

Pat Kelleher said USA Hockey's membership has grown significantly in each of the Southern states where the NHL put teams.

The numbers are growing all around the South - including in Georgia, where Atlanta lost the Thrashers to Winnipeg last summer.

"We've truly become a national sport," said Kelleher, USA Hockey's assistant executive director of membership development. "When the NHL expanded, I think that was part of their goal to have a national footprint and not just be in the Northeast or the upper Midwest but to cover the entire country. We benefited from that at USA Hockey because we have participants."

Between 1998-99 and 2010-11, USA Hockey went from 911 members in Georgia to 2,287, an increase of 151 percent.

North Carolina boomed to 170.5 percent with a high of 5,812 players last year. Florida, which had about four ice rinks in the 1990s, now has 25 with players jumping from 5,606 to 11,571 (106.4 percent).

Tennessee had 2,573 players this past season for 118.8 percent jump.

USA Hockey's national membership is up 18.8 percent in that span.

"More people have an opportunity to get on the ice, fall in love with the game and become fans," Kelleher said. "You're not quite at the generational level just yet down in Nashville, but there'll be a generation of kids who grew up playing hockey in Nashville thanks to the Predators.

"And they'll get their kids in it."

That's why the Predators work so hard with youth programs, which fill up in minutes. Sean Henry, Nashville's president and chief operating officer, said baseball has the right model with a grandparent putting a ball, bat or glove in a child's hand almost at birth.

"If you put a stick in a kid's hand, he's going to become a fan. His parents will follow," Henry said. "As he grows up, he will become a single-game buyer, mini-plan buyer, half-season, full-season-ticket holder, a suite holder or buy naming rights to a building someday. You just follow that 6-year-old right on through his life if you will. It's a very simple process."

Results are being seen both on the ice and at the box office.

The Nashville Junior Preds Mite Major team won the Silver Sticks hockey tournament in Ontario, Canada, earlier this month outscoring the competition 63-7.

The Predators honored that team Monday night in a season where they are on franchise-record pace averaging 16,581 fans per game with 15 sellouts.

The Predators are doing their part, having reached the playoffs six of the past seven years and the Western Conference semifinals last season. At the All Star break, they are fifth in the West.

Tampa Bay won the Stanley Cup in 2004 and lost in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals in 2011. Carolina won the Cup in 2006 and Dallas in 1999, while Florida reached the finals in 1996.

Nashville's influence can be seen at the A-Game Sportsplex hockey rinks any day of the week.

But Tim McAllister, A-Game's director of ice and hockey operations, still finds people surprised to learn 16 Tennessee high schools play hockey.

There are more than 300 children playing in A-Game's house and travel programs, skating in games as far away as Chicago and Detroit.

"We're seeing a lot of new kids coming into the program. A lot of new faces," McAllister said. "And we do our best to make sure we see the faces from last year, that they're coming back and playing again."