Gardner Family Continues to Make Their Mark on Hockey in Nashville

There are some legendary hockey families in NHL circles - the Sutters, the Staals, even new Preds defenseman Matt Benning has some impressive bloodlines.
But there is a family here in Nashville with their own lineage in the game, and they may have just accomplished a first in Music City history.
The Gardners go way back in the game of hockey. The late Calvin won two Stanley Cups with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the late 40s and early 50s as a player. His son, Paul, enjoyed his own successful playing career in the NHL and AHL as a forward, and upon retirement in the mid-80s, his coaching career began.
Paul had a few stops behind the bench in the AHL, but when the NHL granted Nashville a franchise and the Predators came to be in 1997, Barry Trotz hired Paul to be his first assistant coach. The Gardners made the move to Tennessee, including Paul's son, Scott, who was a teenager at the time.

"I do remember seeing a lot of kids come out and try the game for the first time," Scott said of the hockey scene in Nashville in the late 90s. "There were a lot of beginners that I think were spurred by the Predators coming into town. So, it was neat to sort of be part of that growth."
Scott played for Centennial High School back then, part of the newly formed Greater Nashville Area Scholastic Hockey (GNASH) League with just four specific high school teams.
All these years later, Scott still lives in Nashville, now with his wife, Shannon, and their sons, Cal - named after the Stanley Cup champion - and Aiden. And when Cal, a freshman goalie at Centennial High, stepped onto the ice this season, the Gardners etched their mark in Nashville hockey history.
Cal became the first legacy at Centennial High School, and chances are high he holds the same distinction in all of GNASH history.
"It's pretty cool to get to play in the footsteps of my dad and hopefully just keep progressing like he was," Cal said. "It's really cool to share the same last name as [my dad, my grandfather and great grandfather, two of which] played in the NHL and coached in the NHL, which is really cool to think back about… [Playing in the NHL] would be my ultimate goal, and it'd be really cool to follow in the footsteps of my grandpa and great grandpa."
If Cal is able to do so, he may also accomplish another first.

Predators General Manager David Poile states with regularity - as do many others involved in the Nashville hockey scene - it's only a matter of time until a player born and raised in Middle Tennessee, and trained through Preds youth hockey programming, makes it to the top League in the world.
"I know the Preds have done a good job recently as they've had some of the better local kids, or at least a lot of locally trained players, participating in their development camps, and that's neat to see," Scott said. "Boys that came through the travel programs, the Jr. Predators, and Calvin played with some of them, got an opportunity to go out and skate with NHL guys… We're really starting to see that first step of really good players coming from here, staying here for as long as they can and then starting to advance. I agree with David; I think it's just a matter of time before someone takes that final step."
The game of hockey was unknown to most Nashville residents back when Scott was in high school, but he has fond memories of telling friends and neighbors the kind of hockey he played was on ice, not a roller rink. Scott used to get on the ice as Predators practices with his father were winding down and interacting with now-former Preds like David Legwand, Scott Walker and Drake Berehowsky, who he lists as some of his favorite players.

That extra ice time also made Scott a better player and solidified that love for the game, a fondness he still holds to this day as a coach in the Nashville Flyers organization with Aidan's team as well as an assistant for Cal's Jr. Predators team.
Cal is a product of the Predators Get Out And Learn! (G.O.A.L!) program that continues to give children the chance to try hockey for free. Cal began as a skater like everyone else, but he quickly gravitated toward the net and became a goaltender, listing Pekka Rinne as one of his favorite players, just like many in Nashville.
Those lessons and time on the ice - coupled with Nashville's postseason success and hosting of the 2016 NHL All-Star Weekend - only amplified Cal's passion and led him to the Jr. Preds program and now the GNASH ranks as well. What the Predators have done for the growth of hockey in the region is obvious to Scott, and for someone who has been here since the beginning of the NHL calling Nashville home, it's easy to see why the sport has become a staple in town.
"When I moved here in '96, I told people I played hockey, and everyone assumed it was roller hockey," Scott said "Since I've been here, I think Nashville's really developed a reputation as a great hockey city. With the Preds' success with the in-arena experience, that's got a little national notoriety, and then even just being at the rinks now, I mean the men's leagues have exploded and there's all kinds of beginner leagues. And the same thing with youth hockey.

"I do think the Preds did a great job of helping to develop and helping sort of breed that love of the game by being involved at the grassroots level, by having that G.O.A.L program, by having alumni involved, and then I think it helps too that Nashville is such a great city. I know that there are a handful of alumni that live here that I see at the rink that are still involved in the game getting high marks in the community, so I think the Predators have been fortunate with having a lot of good people on the team that have continued to be great ambassadors for the game and their program."
Preds alums like J-P Dumont, Jay More, Dan Keczmer, Chris Mason and Hal Gill, as well as NHL alum Ryan Smyth, have all be involved at different youth levels over the years, and people like Scott, who have that pedigree as well, have coached hundreds of children in a place where hockey is still relatively new compared to other hotbeds across the continent.
However, the term "nontraditional market" is now outdated in Nashville, and the impact the Predators have had since their first opening night in October of 1998 is more visible than ever before.

Exhibit A: a young man whose dad was hired to be the team's first assistant coach. He never left Nashville, and now his son is continuing to keep the family name on the back of a hockey jersey.
Perhaps that surname will be back in the NHL someday soon.
"It'd be really cool to see somebody who played on a youth team or the Jr. Predators in Nashville then continue to play for the Preds," Cal said. "It would show that you can basically go from anywhere to play in the NHL."
"For me, I'm consistently excited about the growth of hockey here," Scott said. "There's a ton of great people involved in hockey, all the way down to the bottom of the youth programs and all the way up to all of my interactions with people that work for the Predators. We're really fortunate and really spoiled to have all these great people involved in helping grow what I think is the greatest game in our town."