Saturday, August 22, 2009

Weekend Round-Up and A List of Movie Suggestions

Another slow Saturday at the POTG estate. Posting at this late hour will kill the analytics since I'm the only one in the world doing nothing on a Saturday night.

I did manage to make it over to the local sporting good mecca, Jones and Lang, to pick order a couple of POTG logo polos for us to start the season in style.

J & L have been in business since I was a child and they have great prices on logo stuff that is half what the internet houses charge. I would suggest that anyone nationwide give them a call if you are looking for any special ordered logo or team apparel. They made great hoodies for the boy's hockey team a few years ago.

POTG Radio Preview...

Monday on POTG Radio we are scheduled to have Dirk Hoag of On The Forecheck as our guest. With Training camp opening three weeks from today, we will be focusing our attention back on the Predators after doing a few shows of a more "national" nature during the summer.

Dirk is the unchallenged local internet leader in Predators and NHL hockey news and is respected across the hockey community nationwide. His statistical analysis articles are unmatched and his annual miles traveled by team posts are always eagerly awaited by the hockey community. This will be a fun show to gear up for the Pred's upcoming preseason camp.

In the Predator Nation...

Forechecker announced the results of the all time favorite Predator team yesterday and today has the wallpaper up with a composite of the team. The weekend Breakfast Links are also being served. Dirk also posted the NHL season on a Google spreadsheet for everyone to use. Finally, he also takes a look at Russian pride and why it is important for the KHL to sign big name players. Dirk has had a busy day.

Brandon Felder has a good post on the Goc signing and answers a few more questions. One of his readers pointed out that Goc would have to clear waivers if sent to the AHL. That is something I had not thought of.

Jeremy at Section 303 also has a different view of Goc, having seen him as a young player in San Jose when he lived on the left coast.

Hockey's Future has a great article on Mitch Korn, the Pred's goalie coach. It is a feature length story that leaves little uncovered about Korn and the way the Predators have their staff set up for the coming year.

An interview with Ryan Ellis is up at Bleacher Report. It is written by Andrew Echevarria who thinks that Nashville "hasn’t been very successful in the recent years." I guess Andrew's team (Toronto) has made the playoffs more than four times in the last five years. I will cut a little slack because he is 15.

The Psycho Puck Lady has a bunch of interestingly random photos, and then in a separate post discovers that she has a big fan base in Nashville. Maybe that will sway her to visit to Music City this season. She gives props to Nashville sites including JAS Faulkner's Confessions of a Cheese Grits Fiend, View from 111, and POTG. She also lists our friend Michelle Kenneth's site as being "the most shockingly entertaining blog I've been introduced to this week." Thanks for the props for Nashville sites and friends. The hockey world is starting to awaken to the fact that there is actually hockey life in a non-traditional market.

Correction: Misquote in the above paragraph as Michelle tweets "I was reading your 8/22 entry on POTG. I said that about PsychoPuckLady, not vice versa. :) She was quoting what I said about her."

Around the NHL...

The big news on Friday was the Dany Heatley press conference where he continued to prove himself to be a self centered jerk. Pierre Lebrun has a piece on the presser. The biggest thing to come out of it is Heatley's contention that the Senators were the ones who leaked the trade request story. For some reason, I don't remember it quite like that.

Scott Burnside has a longer piece looking at Heatley's career and how this latest episode fits in with his ongoing lack of commitment to any place he has been.

Mirtle puts the numbers to the test on Heatley's feeling that he was getting short shifted at the end of the year.

Ryan at the RedLightDistrict is heading into the home stretch with his fantasy round-up. Today he has the top 20 goalies. He has also gone deep on Defensemen 1-40 41-80, Right wingers 1-30, 31-60, Left wingers 1-30, 31-60 and Centers 1-30, 31-60, 61-90.

Ryan also eliminates twenty teams from the cup race this year. Here are the last ten standing.

Matt Reitz has a good story that I can relate to. It's all about being the only hockey fan in a crowd. That is a situation where I seem to live about 90 % of my life. It's one of the benefits of living in a "non-traditional" market.

Thanks to Puck Central, a great Rangers and all-round site, for adding POTG to his comprehensive list of Hockey Tweeters to follow. This is a good place to refer friends that are new to Twitter and want a variety of folks to follow.

Tomas Vokoun, who just won the all time favorite Preds goalie award, is hoping for a better start to the season in Florida.

Illegal Curve looks at what the bookies think this year versus last year.

Team Canada opens their Olympic camp this week and here is the roster breakdown between Red and White squads.

Here is a "business" type view of the Coyote's situation from Bloomberg.

A View From The Cheap Seats has an article that is like Twitter on steroids as she asks five questions and posts the answers.

@Dani3boyz hosted another Tweetup last night on Long Islandand all appeared to be happy in these pictures.

If you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of Dani.

Nick from Let There Be Lighthouse and @Islesblogger are also pictured.



Here is a story from Basically Becky describing the Tweetup festivities.




Off Topic...

This is a cool story about Jose Hernandez who is going up on the space shuttle next week. He started out as a child migrant worker in the fields of California and didn't learn English until he was twelve. Best line in the article is Jose talking about his parents being excited, "And of course now being an astronaut, to them that's just unbelievable. I think they're higher in orbit than we're going to be in."

Mark from The View From 111 asked for a list of 15 favorite movies. I couldn't do just 15 and I'm sure I missed some favorites, but here is a list of movies that I would never tire of watching.
Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, The Aviator, Into The Wild, Caddyshack, Gilbert Grape, Matchstick Men, Pirates of the Caribbean 1, No Country for Old Men, Big Lebowski, Donnie Brasco, Coal Miner's Daughter, Eddie and the Cruisers, Natural Born Killers, True Romance, The Hoax, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fight Club, Office Space, Ocean's 11-12, Hannibal Lector Trilogy, Swingers, Lords of Dogtown/Dogtown and Z Boys, Riding Giants, Catch Me if You Can, The Shining, Capote, Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Lucky Number Slevin and many more that I can't remember.

I haven't had a Chaco Canyon post in a few weeks so here is one from my friend Christina Solstad about the discovery of a Pit House near where work is being done to upgrade the campground. West of Chaco is Canyon de Chelly which has a write up in the NYT. I am amazed that in the same article it mentions a hotel inside of Monument Valley. Unbelievable!

In closing, here is an oddity, a video clip from the Tennessean of Al Gore hosting the Nashville premiere of Inglorious Basterds.

More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

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