Thursday, April 2, 2009

Thursday Thoughts

We have just received word from the Predators, via the Forechecker, that Jackson's tip from Milwaukee last night did indeed come to fruition and that Jed Ortmeyer is back with the Preds. While not the biggest story of the year, Jackson's investigative work, breaking the story 12 hours before the official announcement, makes a father proud. How about that Ek? Maybe Jackson should have made it an (E5) last night.

To no one's surprise, Steve Sullivan was officially announced as the Predator's nominee for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy that goes to the player that "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey." The winner will be announced at the NHL Awards banquet at the Palms hotel in Las Vegas on June 18th. If you want to enter a contest to win a trip to see Sully collect his award, go here. Each NHL team has a nominee for the award and the announcements have been staggered this year so that a division per day is announced. Hat's off to all 30 nominees as they all have had situations to overcome in order to continue to compete at the highest level of hockey in the world. That being said, Sully has got to be a lock this year.

Under the who would have known category, Section303's Jeremy Gover proclaimed "Happy National Ferret Day" on Twitter so I had to check it our. In doing so, I found that according to Holidays for Everyday, April 2 is also "Teen Hockey Day (1980, Wayne Gretzky became the first teenager to score 50 goals during an NHL hockey season)". Again, who would have known? Thanks to Jeremy for the tip.

From the home of hockey in Toronto, Justin Kozuch, main man at Refresh Events tipped me off to a fundraiser being done up there where a coffee shop is trying to break the world record for "Pay it Backwards". Probably no one from here will be in Toronto to participate, but it sounds like a good idea to help out a good cause here and force people like me to step out of my comfort zone to do something nice for someone i don't know. This type event was new to me but well known to co-workers who again accused me of "not getting out much". I'm sure if I had a chance to hear about it before now I was thinking about hockey instead.

Big games tonight that affect our position in the top eight in the Western Conference include St Louis at Detroit (Go Wings!), Anaheim at Vancouver (Go Nooks!), and San Jose visiting the slumping Oilers (Go Sharks!).

We are still awaiting word on how Jason Arnott did at practice today as John Glennon reported yesterday.

And for those who are on the fence about attending Mule Day events tonight in Columbia, Tennessee, the highlight of today's schedule appears to be the "Mule and Donkey Seminar" at the Senior Center at 6:00 p.m. So as the slogan says in the following ...

More updates will be added as the day progresses.

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

Afternoon Updates

Two Pred prospects were given AHL All-Star honors as announced by the league this afternoon. Goalie Drew McIntyre and defensman Cody Franson were both named the the six man second team. This was McIntyre's second AHL AS honor as he was also named to the All-star squad while playing for Manitoba last year. He has complied a 31-13-4 record while leading the Milwaukee Admirals to this year's AHL Western Conference Championship. Franson was named to the AHL Rookie All-star team last year. This year he is third in the league in scoring for a defenseman with 9 goals and 41 assists for the Ads. One of the oddities in the group receiving honors is 29 year old, Darren Haydar who was originally drafted by the Preds in 1999. He has consitantly excelled at the AHL level, holding many career records, but has never been able to stick at the NHL level.

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