Stanley Cup Final: Free Catfish, Catfish-Related 'Legal Advice' For Nashville Predators Fans

NASHVILLE, TN — There are 80 whole catfish on ice at Little's Fish Company at the corner of Monroe and 6th in Germantown. Proprietor Chris Little hopes all 80 end up on the ice at Fifth and Broadway.

Little, owner of the business started by his grandfather in 1955, is offering a free whole, head-on catfish to anyone who can show a ticket to Game 3 or 4 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins at Bridgestone Arena. As of midday Friday, no one had taken him up on the offer, but he expects brisk business in the hours leading up to game time. (For more updates on this story and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Middle Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

Little said his offer — ticketless patrons still have to pay a $1.95 per pound — was a response to Wholey's, a famous Pittsburgh fishmonger, requiring identification to buy whole catfish and barring sales to anyone from Tennessee.

"We have 80 ready to go and I'm pretty sure we'll sell out of them," he said Friday.

Catfish-tossing — a Southern-fried Preds fan adaptation of the long-standing Detroit Red Wings tradition of heaving an octopus during playoff games — has been a part of Nashville fan lore since at least 2003, but with the Predators playing in the team's first Stanley Cup Final, has received broad national attention, particularly after Jacob Waddell heaved a flattened and steathily snuck-in mudcat on the ice of Pittsburgh's PPG Paints Arena during Game 1. Waddell was charged with disorderly conduct, disrupting a meeting and possession of an instrument of a crime. The Allegheny County district attorney dropped the charges.

Local defense attorney Ben Raybin of Raybin & Weissman wrote a blog post this week examining whether catfish-tossing is illegal under Tennessee law. Raybin wrote that it was unlikely a Preds fan would be charged under Tennessee law, in part because there is no separate "possession of an instrument of a crime" statute. Tennessee requires "substantial interference" for a disrupting a meeting charge, so Raybin concluded that as long as the toss happened during a break, it wouldn't meet the standard.

In Tennessee, disorderly conduct requires an action that causes a public annoyance with no legitimate purpose.

"Celebrating a Predators goal in Nashville serves a very legitimate purpose and is not intended to cause public annoyance, so I would be surprised to see 12 local jurors find someone guilty of this for throwing a catfish," he wrote.

Raybin went on to say that a creative prosecutor might find a way to charge someone with a number of other offenses: littering, obstructing a waterway, terrorism (particularly if the fish could be construed as a biological weapon), reckless endangerment or assault. He noted that it's unlikely to draw a cruelty to animals charge because Tennessee law only applies to living creatures. He also pointed out that it is illegal to take a fish from "a box, net, basket or off the hook of another person" (the crime is, appropriately, "taking a fish caught by another") and advises purchasing a to-be-thrown fish from a fishmonger.

"Obviously, this blog post is intended to be a humorous review of certain laws and is not intended to be taken as legal advice. I cannot guarantee whether or not you would be charged with any offense for throwing a catfish on the ice at a hockey game, but would hope that Nashville law enforcement has a better sense of humor than those crybabies in Pittsburgh," Raybin concluded.

Game 3 is set for 7 p.m. Saturday. Game 4 will begin 7 p.m. Monday. The Preds trail the Penguins 2-0 in the best-of-seven series.

Image by Olivia Lind, used by permission