Where is the love?

It's time to get down to business.

With the exception of a handful of games (I do mean just a handful...and I have tiny, tiny hands), I have yet to see the Predators team I know and love show up on the ice. The team I know would bring it to the ice every night. The team I know would fight through adversity and grind it out. The team I know would gladly stick up for their teammates when the cards were down. The team I know sometimes played with more heart than skill, yet I loved them anyway. The team I know played like a team and it showed. This is not that team.

Here's my call to arms: The Predators need to evoke the spirit and playing style of Jed Ortmeyer. Before you LOL and WTF all over that last sentence, hear me out. Jed Ortmeyer, when healthy (and maybe even when he's not healthy), plays every shift on the ice with 150% behind it. He plays with his heart first, head second. He plays like he means it, like hockey is what he's destined for, as if there is no other in job in the world that would better suit him. Now Jed is nowhere near the best player in the league. Heck, he's not really even in the league at the moment. But it doesn't matter. He puts it all out there and fans rally around him because of the energy he brings to the game.

With the whole of the league seemingly against us last season, we proved most everyone wrong by taking a "fire sale" roster and persevering through a few rough patches to come out on the winning side of the season. As a team, we didn't seem to care that we squeaked into the playoffs, seeded number 8. It didn't matter because we rallied together to overcome the odds stacked against us. We fought hard. We were resilient. We were defiant. We even managed to give the Red Wings a run for their money. In essence, we became a team of Jed Ortmeyers.

This season, more often than not, I find myself at a loss for words over our performance. I can't put together a string of feel good sentences to form a mushy paragraph about my love for this team...mostly because the love's not there. Something is amiss this time around. The drive, passion and love for the game, the Jed Ortmeyer-ness (if you will) just doesn't seem to flicker in our player's eyes. Oh sure, there are traces of individual exuberance; just not enough to light a fire that will ignite an entire team.

So boys, here's the deal. Find your passion for the game again. Take a step back in time and remember what it was like playing hockey as a child. Remember why you started playing hockey in the first place. Find the spark that began your journey and brought you to where you are now. And after you've done all these things, bring that passion, that love of the game, with you to the rink every day. Play more like the Tin Man and less like the Scarecrow. When you play like you mean it, it shows.

Oh, and if you were looking for a recap of the game tonight, here you go: the final score was 3-1, New Jersey.