Wednesday's Web Wanderings

Tonight is the big night for the first ever Nashville NHL Tweetup and we are excited to be able to participate with a special edition POTG Radio live remote broadcast at the Nashville NHL Tweetup at The Closing Bell Wall Street Pub from 7-8 central. This will be our first ever venture from the living room out into public to do the show.

We expect to be able to talk with several folks during our time there and it should be an interesting hour. Anyone who has something they want to say, please come see us. And for those who don't want to go on live, please introduce yourselves. We would like to meet as many folks in person as possible.

For full details including an impressive list of prizes to be given away go here. Everyone is invited to the event. Don't let the name fool you, just like "Hockey is for Everyone" so are Tweetups. More information is available here and on Facebook here. The NHL site for all Tweetups is here. Thanks to George Scoville and others for getting this together.

In other news of the day, the Predators missing out on the playoffs has opened numerous opportunities for players to go to the World Championships next week in Europe. Barry Trotz, Shea Weber and Dan Hamhuis had been announced previously as members of Team Canada. Word is filtering out that Ryan Suter will play for Team USA and that Pekka Rinne and Ville Koistinen will also play for their homelands too.

In the biggest non-event I've seen in a while, the lottery balls were pulled to determine the final lineup for this Summer's NHL free agent draft. TSN/Versus basically spent 30 minutes to say that nothing changed. Was it really worth having five top hockey officials fly in to the studio for that? One positive was they did have brief interviews with John Tavares and a very sleepy Victor Hedman. The Preds stay at # 11 as shown on this link, along with a lot of scouting info that the Preds will mull over. Here is the final Central Scouting Rankings for the draft eligible players.

Another indication that Tuesday was a slow news day was the amount of press dedicated to the resigning of Hugh Jessiman who played some with the Rangers in the past and is currently chasing the Calder Cup in Milwaukee.

Barry Trotz and David Poile spent Tuesday having final meetings with players and holding a final Press Conference at the Sommet Center. Poile also appeared on 104.5 and as Forchecker reports has not ruled out the return of Alexander Radulov. It might not be all that easy according to Jason Arnoots comments last Saturday.

With the puck drop tonight, everyone is making their playoff projections. Two of the most complete analysis that I've seen are from our Monday night guests on POTG Radio, Ryan from the Red Light District and Brandon Felder from Hockey Buzz. Never to be outdone, the Forchecker also had a load of playoff info and insights. Once you look at these pages, you will know it all. Mirtle finishes his bracket all the way to Pittsburgh?

To post your picks for posterity go to Rinkotology and Hockeytweets.

Mark at TheViewFrom111 had some interesting awards to give out based on the past season. Check it out here.

Mysteriously, overnight the new HockeyBuzz/Versus page appeared with a lot of our Facebook and Twitter buddies having their names in big bold type right on the front. Congrats to Eklund and his long list of writers for seeing their hard work pay off. Versus finally has a reason for someone to look at their site.

In the shamless self promotion category, our main man, Sports Editor Marion Wilhoite at the Columbia Daily Herald ran two of our stories (one, two) on the same day today and had four hockey stories altogether to kick off the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Who would know that Columbia, Tennessee would become such a hotbed of hockey news! Even if you aren't a regular Herald reader, email Marion to thank him for his PredsOnTheGlass hockey coverage.

That's it for now. More later as we move toward tonight's Tweetup event.

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

Late Additions

Here's the story behind the story of how the NHL Tweetup got going from AllHabs.

The Puck Daddy staff makes their picks.

John Glennon confirms that Ryan Suter is on Team USA and a surprise to me is that Pred Prospect Colin Wilson will also play for the USA squad. Here is the official USA Hockey story with the 19 players selected.

Here's a breaking story from the Twitterverse "RT @umassdilo Welcome NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to Twitter! @Commish_Gary. He'll throw out the ceremonial 1st Tweet at 7 p.m #NHLTweetup" It will be interesting to see if this is a one time thing or if he will try to connect with fans. I'll reserve comments for now. At least he's taking a whack at it.

David Poile might have done things differently at the trade deadline, per John Glennon.

This is what it's all about...