Thursday ahead of Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final, a video featuring Penguins forward Jake Guentzel went viral.
Unfortunately for him, it was a video in which he wasn't very happy after a Predators fan served him a catfish at a bar in Nashville called Rippy's.
The prank for lack of a better word was brilliant, and although Guentzel wasn't a fan of it, the people he was sitting with seemed to get a kick out of it.
Obviously catfish have been a hug talking point over the course of the Stanley Cup final. The fish is a symbol of Predators hockey, and whether it be in Smashville or on the road, they always seem to travel well.
The man who served the dynamic rookie the catfish, John Warmath, was kind enough to give us some more details about what happened and why he decided to do it.
Luca Celebre: For starters, what day was it on?
John Warmath: Last Sunday (June 4th, Game 4 was June 5th)
LC: How did the idea to serve the catfish to Guentzel come about?
JW: One of my buddies is a Pens fan and he'd been irked by how nice everyone in Nashville was being to him... He kinda thought that was going to turn the tide in the Preds' favour and it seemed to work in Game 3 so I thought why not show Guentzel some southern hospitality plus a little Preds pride to see if we can keep that going for Game 4.
LC: Where did you get the catfish? Is that something the bar serves and you just ordered it?
JW: Yeah it's on the menu at Rippy's, obviously a southern classic as well as a Predators symbol so it seemed appropriate. He was, obviously, a little salty about it. He got up and left right after. His buddies who stuck around didn't want the catfish so after 10-15 minutes we went back over and ate it ourselves.
LC: Were you nervous at all about going up to Guentzel and serving him the catfish?
JW: Not at all. Wasn't too sure how his buddies would react but they seemed to think it was kinda funny.
LC: Yeah I noticed that they were laughing in the background which made it that much better. Once you saw the look on his face did you just want to get as far away as you could? Did you expect him to say something or anything like that?
JW: In the moment I was laughing too hard to think about how hard he could hit me. Plus, there's some pretty big boys taking care of security up at Rippy's.
LC: Are you surprised at how much attention the video has gotten? Did you think that could happen once you kinda saw it after and realized what you just did?
JW: Yeah, obviously thought it'd be a good laugh for my buddies in Nashville but you never expect something like that to be creeping up on 50K views.
John, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, had some guts to go up to arguably the Penguins' best player in the series thus far and serve him a catfish, but it was worth it to say the least.
It was a wonderful display of "southern hospitality", and John and every Predators fan is hoping their team returns home with a 3-2 series lead when Game 5 is all said and done.
(H/T: John Warmath)
