Remembering when Barry Trotz put the Nashville Predators through Army training | Estes

CLARKSVILLE – They showed up without knowing what to expect. They changed into uniforms and went outside. Suddenly, it was go time. Loud heavy metal music. Orders to get down and start push-ups. And this was only a beginning to the hours ahead.

“One of the hardest days I've ever had in my life,” recalled legendary Preds goalie Pekka Rinne .

Boot camp?

Nah, just a old preseason for Barry Trotz’s Nashville Predators .

Trotz – then the Predators coach and now their general manager – twice took players for a team-bonding experience staged through the U.S. Army at Fort Campbell. It was like what incoming military recruits might face over their introductory weeks. Pretty standard for them, but not for professional hockey players. It started with physical fitness exercises and turned into all types of demanding, wild tasks designed to bring a team together.

The memories were fresh again Wednesday night, since the idea was spawned from the same friendship that was behind the Predators' second Gold Star Showcase at F&M Bank Arena.

This season's Predators, currently in training camp, treated fans to an intrasquad game that benefitted the Special Operations Warrior Foundation , a nonprofit that assists the families of deceased or severely wounded Special Operations personnel and other service members.

Mostly young players and prospects were on the ice. Big-name veterans like Roman Josi, Steven Stamkos, Filip Forsberg and Juuse Saros didn’t play in Wednesday's game, but they were in attendance. They met with SOWF families after the first period, signing autographs and taking pictures.

The organization’s president and CEO, Clay Hutmacher , was in attendance, too. A retired Major General, he’s the person who, at Trotz’s request, put the Predators through their training years ago.

“He wanted to do something unique that (players) would never do,” Hutmacher said of Trotz. “… We gave them problems, like ‘OK, you've got three guys. You've got to move this Humvee with flat tires across this field.’ ”

Hutmacher built that training day for the 2008-09 Predators, he said, and then constructed another the following year. It got creative, too. One of the drills had the players as downed pilots in an aircraft. They had to rescue personnel, and in the process, an “enemy” combatant was firing (blanks) at them.

There were exercises over water. There were explosions and “people trying to kidnap us,” Trotz recalled. The players carried logs. They fired weapons. They flew on a helicopter.

“It was a really cool experience,” Rinne said. “At the heat of the moment, it didn't feel very cool. It was so hard. But afterwards, it's something that you always talk about.”

Such an activity would never fly in the NHL these days, Trotz said – “The NHLPA, they wouldn't allow it, I don’t think” – but it made a lasting impact on those Predators at that time.

“Guys that year talked about when we had a difficult game or a bad schedule, guys would say 'That's nothing,’ ” Trotz said. “… We became, culturally, that team that was rock solid, wasn't scared of challenges. That's sort of been something that's stuck for a long time.”

Trotz said that former Predators star Shea Weber, “one of the toughest individuals I know,” once told him he was proud to have done it, but he never wanted to do it again. “Because it was that hard.”

“It was the best team-building,” Trotz added. “The guys that they thought they couldn't make it after maybe two hours, when they got about six hours into it, they looked like men. And they were determined that they were going to go this distance. ... A lot of times, anything you do that's very difficult, there's a moment or time where you don't think you maybe do it. And you fight through it, and then you become a stronger person on the other side."

Those Predators players, Hutmacher recalled, fared better with the exercise than he anticipated.

In particular, a goal of the training was to divide teammates, only to bring them back together later and illustrate the necessity of teamwork. But with hockey players, the division didn't work.

“We never could do that with them,” Hutmacher recalled, “because they're already super tightknit.”

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: Remembering when Barry Trotz put the Nashville Predators through Army training | Estes