FRANKLIN, Tenn. – P.K. Subban arrives for our meeting in this suburb about a half hour outside Nashville dressed for the weather.
It is a bit chilly on this day. His coat is, to put it mildly, outrageous.
Subban, when asked to describe it, says the only thing I need to know about the coat is you can only get it in L.A. I respond that the coat actually looks like it’s made out of those heavy cloth tarps you place over furniture when you move.

That’s kind of the irony, I suppose, because Subban isn’t going anywhere. He’s home.
That becomes clear as soon as we enter the restaurant where we are meeting, a place Subban goes very regularly. Just as he had his favourite sushi place in Montreal, a place he frequented so often that the chef, Antonio Park, still comes to Nashville regularly to prepare food for him, this place has become Subban’s go-to spot.

He knows the waiters. He knows the bartenders. He knows the regulars.
“I love it here,” he says.

Subban has been consistent on that message, how much he loves his new life in Tennessee. But there’s been a lot left unsaid about his departure from Montreal. That stuff remains largely unsaid here, but Subban does delve a little bit into the reasons he thinks it didn’t work out with the Canadiens.

Now, a big disclaimer here, this is Subban’s point of view. The Canadiens and general manager Marc Bergevin have been clear that they don’t want to talk about the trade anymore, and frankly, I don’t think they have any regrets so far over the acquisition of Shea Weber. Just as the Predators are very happy to have Subban.

The trade, so far at least, has been a win-win, even if the Canadiens are languishing near the bottom of the NHL standings right now and the Predators went to the Stanley Cup Final last season. Neither of those things happened solely because of one player or one trade.

One thing about Subban that has always been true is he can talk. A lot. Some of these answers go on forever and you have to be able to pick out what matters and what doesn’t. I have chosen to leave them largely unedited because everything kind of leads toward a conclusion eventually, and the path he takes to get there can say something about the thoughts behind the words. But there are no awkward silences when you talk to Subban. You ask a question and he starts answering it immediately, even if he’s not sure what the answer is right away. Some people find that answer by thinking silently. He finds it through talking. But he eventually finds it.
So here is Part 1 of The Athletic’s sit down with P.K. Subban, focusing on his departure from the Canadiens, a long and winding road of answers with little truth nuggets buried inside. Tomorrow, we will talk to him about why he thinks he is such a polarizing figure and his reluctance to talk about race.

The Athletic: Ok, let’s start with a softball, have you figured out why you got traded from Montreal? You said you didn’t want to know and you’ll never know, but I have a feeling you have an idea.

P.K. Subban: It’s a question that I continue to get over and over again, why I was traded. I think as the team, whether they have success or not, but as there’s turmoil in Montreal I think the questions start to come out even more. The reality is I’ll never know 100 percent why I was traded unless I sit down with Berg and Geoff Molson and ask them what happened and where it went.
I know that obviously there’s a lot of different things that happened during my time there. Was there anything that happened that I didn’t think could be managed? No. In my opinion, everything was managed. And if it wasn’t managed it wasn’t something big enough that anybody ever had to worry about.For me, I just look at my time there on and off the ice, and if I look at on the ice, I’m happy with how I performed there. Were there times I could have played better? Sure. Were there moments I made mistakes? Sure. But I always showed up to play hard and I think the majority of the time I was there we had a competitive team, and I think I helped the team be competitive.As far as me being traded, hearing it is a hockey trade, I don’t really know what that means, necessarily…

The Athletic: Well it means you’re trading a good player for another good player.

Subban: Ok, ok, so I understand that. But in terms of the difference between myself and Shea, I think we’re completely different players. We have some similarities, we both like to shoot the puck, we both score goals with our one-timers and slapshots. He defends against the top players, I defend against the top players.

The Athletic: That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, they had you under contract for a long time and then all of a sudden you were tradeable. I understand there’s some things you’re not going to say here, but you had to have some sense that something was up. What do you think was the source of them suddenly being willing to trade you before your no-trade kicked in?

Subban: I think my time in Montreal was very interesting. I look at when I started in Montreal, I came in with a lot surrounding me in terms of popularity. Playing world juniors, winning world juniors, opening up my big mouth on draft day and saying I wanted to bring a Stanley Cup back to Montreal. I look at all that stuff and I’m saying, I kind of built up this hype. Coming into my career in Montreal I came in with a lot going on around me already and it just never seemed to stop.

It was never anything that bothered me. Being a Habs fan and growing up a Habs fan, I kind of knew what Montreal was all about. I understood the team and what it meant to the city and the fans and the community and how die hard they were. I learned to embrace that before I even got there. I actually thrived on it, thrived on the pressure. That’s the fun part about playing in Montreal.
But things changed for me as my career went on because I think in a lot of ways, the hype became real. I think I backed it up, I think I performed, I performed at a high level. I ended up winning a Norris Trophy, going to the Olympics and winning a gold medal, having significant playoff games and rounds. You know in Montreal, when you’re scoring overtime winning goals, you have big performances, you find ways to win big games in big moments, that’s what’s kind of engraved in the history and that’s what people talk about. I think I had a lot of those moments in Montreal.

So sort of my, I don’t want to say popularity, but everything with me, the brand, everything around me sort of grew. And it jumped in a small period of time. I think you have to realize what comes with that and I think the organization has managed players for a hundred some-odd years the same way. A lot of times you would hear about players wanting to do something differently and you would hear, ‘Well, Jean Béliveau did this when he played here’ and this guy did this. I think it was just what happened for me may not happen for every player that plays in the NHL. Every player in the NHL may not have 4 million followers on social media, every player in the NHL may not have a foundation that donates millions of dollars, every player may not have the opportunity to go to the ESPYs or be on the Ellen show or the Daily Show or have interests outside of hockey. But these things became real.

I think when you’ve been in the league for five or six years, you know what it takes for you to perform at a high level. My schedule, in terms of how I managed my days, were based on my body and what I needed to do to prepare my body to play. But that doesn’t take 24 hours. That’s foam rolling, that’s massage, that’s my chiropractic therapy, that’s cold tub, that’s hot tub, that’s stretching, that’s eating properly going to a restaurant where I have my meals made for me. But once that happens, there’s still 12 to 15 hours left in the day. That’s where I started my own marketing company, that’s where I developed other interests other than just playing hockey. Because I’m not a little boy anymore. I’m not 18 looking to make my mark in the NHL. I established myself and it’s about bringing your life full circle, and full circle is just that, it’s starting a family, it’s being a professional athlete, it’s having other interests outside. And, believe it or not, those interests made me a better hockey player.

But with that comes adjustment from people around you. I think both of us have to take responsibility on not recognizing what was in front of me and what was going on around me, and that was the fact that I had interests to donate money to the hospital, I had interests to continue to develop on the marketing side and to have a company like WME be involved and do other interesting things because hockey doesn’t define me as a person.

The Athletic: Further to that, do you think the donation to the hospital somehow created a rift between you and the team? Because a lot of people noticed that no one from the team was there that day, so I’ve always wondered if they knew and if that created some tension.

Subban: I look at the way it happened. I played in Montreal for six years, never once during any of those summers did I have conversations with the front office about what I wanted to do or what I was interested in doing. I never had a conversation about, did you want to be involved in charities, or what endorsement deals are you looking to have because organizations don’t do that for players. Organizations manage organizations, the logo on the front of the jersey not the name on the back. So, if a player has marketing opportunities they have a marketing agency handle that for them. For me, I know how important philanthropy is to me and helping people and families. I have my own team of people who do that for me and an opportunity presented itself to help a significant amount of people and families and I chose to go on that route.

Now, for me, that’s a personal commitment. That commitment is not on anybody else other than me. It’s my name that’s on it. And I wanted to do that because I wanted to give back. I look at both on the marketing side and on the charitable side and I say, well, for six years I never had any conversations with anybody on that stuff. Nobody came to me and grabbed me and sat me down and said, ‘Hey, we understand that you want to give back charitably, we understand that you have opportunities on the marketing side and we want to align with you on those.’ I never had those conversations. I never had them until I made the donation and people understood how important that stuff was to me. I made that donation based on how I’d done business there for the past six years or since I was drafted and I saw it get done. When they give you the rules there’s nothing that says that if you’re going to make a donation to any charitable initiative you have to notify the team.

Now, before it became public, I did have conversations with people in the front office that it was going to happen, so it wasn’t a surprise when I announced it or anything like that.

The Athletic: Ok, so the other possible theory as to where things went wrong was when you went to arbitration in the summer of 2014. Do you think that was the beginning of the end of your time in Montreal?

Subban: I think the part about arbitration that probably makes the most sense is that it never had to happen. I think it was 32 cases were filed and I’m the only guy that goes after the year that I had and the playoff run that our team had, what I had accomplished in Montreal to that date. I think everybody would be in agreement that it didn’t have to get to arbitration.

A lot of people forget that negotiation was in fact a two-year negotiation because I signed a two-year deal. It wasn’t a full two years because it was a lockout year. So in 2013 I had won the Norris, we had all year to negotiate, we didn’t. We had all summer to negotiate, we didn’t. My final year, I don’t know if we had much talks, there was nothing put across my table other than maybe something small in December, but nothing significant that I’d be looking at. The rest of the year nothing happened, that whole summer not much happened.

That’s the number one thing about going through negotiations is it builds a certain understanding that this is a business. That’s the part that probably hurts the most about that whole process, is that playing for the Canadiens, I never saw it as a business. Because I loved to play for the Montreal Canadiens. I loved to wear the jersey. It’s the team that drafted me and gave me the opportunity. Unfortunately, it was made into feeling like a business and I felt like that process kind of drove it in that direction. The reality was that I was willing to sign the year after I won the Norris, I was willing to sign that summer, I was willing to sign during the next year, but you could just tell the negotiation process was just that, it was a negotiation process.

For me, maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe my expectations were that it wasn’t going to be like a normal negotiation, it was going to be pretty cut and dry because I held out the time before, I was forced to take something that I didn’t think was appropriate, but I did it, they asked me to go perform and I did that. So to see the process the second time go that route, I guess you could say I was in a position to look at everything as a business, which is what I never wanted to do because I really loved to play for that team.
When you look at things as a business, then you have to look at it based on what could happen moving forward, you may not be in that jersey anymore. That, for me, was a turning point in my career because that’s the maturity that you have to have unfortunately in professional sports, you have to be able to develop the mentality that this is a business. You’re only our product until we don’t want you anymore and we ship you off. That’s the reality of it.

The Athletic: Do you feel that your relationship changed with the team from that point on?

Subban: I didn’t think so. After the deal got done, I can’t speak for Geoff or Marc, but I can speak for myself and say that it didn’t. I looked at that process like I finally feel that I’m being respected for everything that I’ve done for the franchise to this point. I’m being respected for what I can do on the ice and now it’s my job to go and continue to prove to everybody that I can do that and do even more than what I’ve done. I look at that year after I signed my deal, I had an amazing start to the year, went on to have a great year. In my opinion, that was the best year of my professional career so far. I think I had 60 points, I was like plus-15 (he did have 60 points, a career high, but he was a plus-21, also a career best). To be honest with you, in my opinion I deserved to win the Norris that year more so than in 2013. If you would have told me at the end of that season, based on how I played the year after I signed that deal, that (13) months later I would be traded, I wouldn’t have believed you.

My performance would say I was willing to do anything and everything for that team. When I signed that deal I was so happy because I knew I was going to be a Montreal Canadien for the rest of my life. I’m never going to play anywhere else and I’m going to wear this jersey because I’m going to perform well. I’m going to do that.

I can’t say that they felt the same way. I don’t know. You would have to ask them that question.