Nashville hockey fans waited, increasingly impatiently, on March 3, 2013.
It was the NHL's trade deadline and the far-from-contention Predators had made only one move, but the team hadn't announced that they were done for the day.
The 3 p.m. deadline passed and still no word out of 501 Broadway.
A half-hour passed.
Then 45 minutes.
Finally, nearly an hour later, general manager David Poile announced a longtime Predator — the now-disgruntled Martin Erat — and minor leaguer Michael Latta had been traded to the Washington Capitals for young Swedish scoring phenom Filip Forsberg.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, where it was already March 4, Forsberg was nowhere to be found.
"I wasn't at home," Forsberg says. With only one game left in his Swedish team's season, Forsberg had been out with friends.
Capitals GM George McPhee had been dialing his home number in the wee hours. Eventually, Forsberg's father — himself a former player in the Swedish league and the man who put Filip on skates for the first time at "3 or 4 years old" — answered McPhee's call and tracked down his son.
He told his son — selected 11th overall in the 2012 draft by the Caps — he was now a Nashville Predator.
Forsberg spent the remainder of the season and the first part of the next with the Predators, but struggled — a combination of the narrower North American rink and the strictures of former coach Barry Trotz's system — and eventually honed his trade with the farm club in Milwaukee. He blossomed.
"I'm a bit more mature now," the affable youngster said in the locker room after a Wednesday morning practice.
Now, with Peter Laviolette at the helm and a more upbeat, go-go system, Forsberg says he "can't complain" about the changes in Nashville.
There's not much to complain about. The Predators have been among the league's best teams this season, and Nashville fans who had to wait an hour March 3, 2013, to find out who the team's newest player would be discovered he was something they've been waiting for a lot longer that: a legitimately skilled, thrilling goal-scorer. He squeezes in and out of tight spaces with the grace of a modern dancer and the understated strength and power of a welterweight prize fighter. He's a mongoose on steel blades: an unafraid purveyor of quick strikes.
And though Nashvillians often feel they are treated like backwater nothings by the hockey establishment, the success of Forsberg and the team have been tough to ignore. A leader for the Calder Trophy for the league's best rookie, Forsberg was a late addition to the NHL All-Star Game (though he had been chosen to be in the skills contest), where he was the last player picked in the draft. He "won" a car ("I haven't got it yet," he notes), put on a sublime performance in the skills contest, then scored twice in the game, the first Predator to ever notch a goal in the midseason exhibition.
"It was a lot of fun. I was going anyway, but I'd rather play in the game instead of just doing the skills," he says.
Forsberg attributes much of his success to his veteran linemates — notably center Mike Ribeiro and fellow winger James Neal.
"We got to play with each other from the first exhibition. They are two top forwards, and it was really working good," he says.
Ribeiro has a knack for setting up Forsberg with passes that surprise the rookie.
"Sometimes you only have a half a meter of space, and he'll pass it. You really have to be aware out there," he says.
Off the ice, Forsberg says he spends most of his time relaxing, hanging out with a couple fellow Swedes, defenseman Mattias Ekholm and center Calle Jarnkrok, who like to gibe their countryman, exaggerating his impressive stats into video-game-on-idiot-mode levels, saying he has 70 goals in 15 games and so on. Forsberg's family has moved to town, as well. That combination of mocking bonhomie and the comfort of kinfolk helps keep the already humble Forsberg grounded even as he ascends to an altitude of offense heretofore unseen at Bridgestone Arena, where Forsberg says the crowd hoists the Predators ever higher.
"It's a really loud building," he says. "This year's been amazing. Even when we're struggling, they've been really loud."
With Forsberg in the fold, there will be even more amazing years ahead ... and perhaps an amazing season that stretches into the early summer?
"That's the plan," he says.
More From the 2015 People Issue
The Textile Designer: Andra Eggleston / The Transformer: Bill Schleicher / The Chief: Steve Anderson / The Bookseller: Yusef Harris / The Producer: Dave Cobb / The Rookie: Filip Forsberg / The Pedal Steel-Playing Pilot: Joshua Motohashi / The Weathermen: David Drobny & Will Minkoff / The Punk Neuroscientist: Kale Edmiston / The Kitchen Artist: Karla Ruiz / The Metalhead: Kayla Phillips / The Image Master: kogonada / The Bartender: Lee Parrish / The Professor: Lisa Guenther / The Advocate: Marisa Richmond / The Captains: Kellie Hurst & Regina Durkan / The Painter: Michael Shane Neal / The Tunesmith: Shane McAnally
