Stadium Series Blog: Dante Fabbro

Nashville Predators defenseman Dante Fabbro kept a blog throughout the 2022 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series. The Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Nashville Predators 3-2 before 68,619 fans at Nissan Stadium on Saturday.
In his final entry, Fabbro discusses the game, which saw Tanner Jeannot and Filip Forsberg each score a goal for the Predators under near perfect conditions and a temperature of 41 degrees at puck drop, and what's next for his team.

The atmosphere today, throughout the whole day, was unbelievable. I think it's probably one of the best outdoor games I've ever been a part of, especially with all the moving parts and getting all the country singers in here and everything else. It's something I'll remember for the rest of my life.
In the afternoon, we met as a team and traveled to the stadium together. We went down Broadway and turned at Second or Third Avenue to go across the bridge and then kind of right into the stadium. It was crazy to see the support of the fans and the city was just popping. It's unfortunate we couldn't get it done tonight for the fans.
We were all wearing the outfits with the jackets and the hats that Travis Austin designed for us. Each of the jackets was personalized. I didn't do too much with mine. I put my number on there, put Vancouver, where I'm from, and Nashville, where I play now, a song title and a picture on the back. Nothing too crazy. It's not like I have kids or anything like that. I made it a little bit personal just with the Vancouver mention. It was a lot of fun getting ready for that kind of stuff with the hats and everything and being with the rest of the guys.
It was amazing when we finally came out for warmups. The turnout of fans was incredible. From ice level, it looked like there wasn't an empty seat in the house. I just want to say thanks to the fans, they were incredible all night long and have been every night up to this point in the season. It was a lot of fun to be out there and playing for them. But, like I said, we wish we would have won the game.
The weather was amazing for the game, especially after the pouring rain we have had for the past few days. We got lucky tonight with the weather and the temperature and everything. Thank God for that because, you know, rain delays are no fun. We don't want those, especially with how many people were willing to show up.
It was awesome to see Tanner get the first goal of the game and in typical fashion for him, right around the net. You look at him play this year and he's easily one of the hardest-working guys I've ever known, and he deserves every inch of ice he gets out there. He's making a name for himself where he's a threat on both sides of the puck; he's physical, gets to the dirty areas of the ice, and sticks up for his teammates. He's the kind of player you want on every team, and we're lucky to have him on ours.
Then we let up a few goals to get behind 3-1 and that wasn't good. When Forsberg scored to make it 3-2, I thought we pushed really hard for the tying goal, especially in the last couple of minutes after we pulled our goalie. I honestly thought we were going to score and push this thing to overtime. But that's just the way it went tonight.
We'll bounce back from this soon. I don't think our confidence wavers on this team. We take every game as it comes, and we don't take any team lightly. We play as hard as we can every single night, but, of course, there's a big emphasis when we are playing the top teams in the League. I think our confidence is still high. We have a locker room that cares for each other, cares for the guy beside him and is willing to battle hard every single night for each other.
It's definitely nice to be able to knock off some of the top teams like we have earlier in the week against the Florida Panthers and the Dallas Stars, but at the same time, we kind of take it game by game. It's probably a cliche, but we know we can't get too high after wins or losses. That's how this team goes about business. That's why it's so fun to be a part of this team and be in this locker room.
We don't have another game until we play in Seattle against the Kraken on Wednesday. Now, we need to get our bodies and our mind right. Like I said, our team is focused on winning games and our confidence doesn't waver. So, we will just get back to practice this week and get back to work.
Thanks for following along with my experiences this week and reading the blog. I just want to say that we appreciate you guys. We love you guys and all of us think you're the best fans in the League and we're going do the best we can to bring home the Stanley Cup.