Friday, February 18, 2011

Predators-Canucks, Playoff Preview? and Friday Findings

Last night's Predators-Canucks game at the Bridgestone Arena was one of the best efforts of the season from the Preds and showed what the team was capable of doing when all 19 on ice players were hitting on the same cylinders.

After the game, Ryan Porth and I were discussing (fantasizing) that the Preds-Nucks would be a great Western Conference finals match-up. It appears that Barry Trotz may have been thinking the same thing when he said:

"There were some great battles out there. It would be pretty interesting to see a Fisher-Kesler battle for seven games in the playoffs. They are sort of both cut from the same cloth."

"The battle between Pekka Rinne and Luongo and the battle between Sutes and Weber and the Sedin Twins. There is some really good games within the game that were really interesting tonight."

That would be great if it came to pass, hopefully in the finals and not the first round.

Predators-Canucks Round-Up...

Here is our game story from last night with video of Barry Trotz's postgame presser.

Josh Cooper had his game story and postgame ponderings. Bryan Mullen had the notes column.

Jim Diamond gets back to talking about Barry Trotz for the Jack Adams Award.

David Boclair has his story at The City Paper.

David Climer says that the Predators like "playoff style hockey."

From the blog world reports come from Ryan Porth, Amanda DiPaolo, Mark Willoughby, Dirk Hoag (with his advances stats), Jeremy Gover, Predatorial, and Hockey Night in Nashville.

Post game audio clips come from Mike Fisher, Nick Spaling, Pekka Rinne, and Shane O'Brien. From the Canucks came Alain Vigneault, Ryan Kesler, and Roberto Luongo.

The other side of the story comes from The Province, Vancouver Sun, Nucks Misconduct, Kurtenblog, The Canucks Way, and Canucks Hockey Blog.

In Pred Nation...

Icethetics asks if the Preds are thinking about mustard jerseys again. I doubt it.

Sarah Fuqua's has a post about the Predators' Swedish prospects and touched base with Patrick Cehlin who was a pick at last summer's NHL Entry Draft in Los Angeles.

The Bridgestone Arena was ranked number two in the country in gross ticket sales in the most recent rankings.

Around the NHL...

Ryan Porth continues his series with a look back at the 2007 trade deadline which was huge for the Predators.

Adrian Dater has an interesting take on NHL violence at SI,

Scotty Wazz has a fictional account of Jim Ballsillie and Gary Bettman discussing the Atlanta situation.

Brandon Worley looks at the free-falling Dallas Stars goaltending situation.

Our good friend Matt Reitz from View from My Seats had his first shot at NBC's Pro Hockey Talk. Great job Matt!

It looks like the St Louis Blues gambled with their fans and lost. If they don;t malke the playoffs, which appears unlikly, they will have to refund half the ticket price on 600 seats. It only gets worse with Jaroslav Halak on the IR.

Joel Quenneville is still in the hospital with a "small ulcer" but is said to be in good spirits.

In a match made in Heaven (or hell) the Ducks picked up Jarkko Ruutu from the Sens for a sixth rounder.

Odds and Ends...

The New York Times has a video look inside the Pixar Studios which is a very non-traditional workplace.

While you can't put your hands on a Motorola XOOM tablet yet, you can read the manual.

Here are 10 evil Twitter accounts.

More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

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