Friday's Draft Day Updates

This is the day hockey fans all across North America have been waiting for with the first round of the NHL entry draft being held tonight in Montreal. Coverage starts at 6:00 on Versus in the US. Saturdays coverage will be on the NHL Network and streamed online.

Locally, Predator fans will be meeting at three separate locations of O'Charley's for draft Parties that are official Predators functions. The official NHLTweetup will be held at the Franklin location. To respond to the TwtVite go here.

Probably the biggest development this year will be the information generated by Twitter from the floor in Montreal. Jamie Shalley @HTM_NHLHomeIce went as far as to call it the "Twitter Draft" which describes where most Tweetdeck aficionados will get their primary information this year. Television can only focus on a couple of things at once whereas the information on Twitter is only limited by how quickly you can read and absorb different opinions.

I haven't done a draft preview in this space but did one a couple of weeks ago (that is a bit dated) for the View from My Seats who published it today. I also did another version of it for The Daily Herald which came out this morning. I would like to thank the Columbia Daily Herald for giving Hockey the top of the page on draft day over Thursday's NBA draft, Baseball and everything else.

In Pred Nation...

John Glennon of the Tennessean reports that David Poile has spoken with Steve Sullivan's agent and will meet again the first of the week. The are reported to be apart on money and length of contract. I like Forechecker's posting yesterday which lays out the way to fund Sully's return.

John also has a few tidbits in his blog including information on Canada possibly picking a couple of Pred D-men for the 2010 Olympic Team.

Forechecker has is Friday roundup which includes the question Is Sutter the new Radulov? This is actually a link to Jim Diamond's column at the Examiner.

Mark at The View from 111 makes good points about the Pred's past draft performances. It is critical that we do better tonight than we have in some of the past drafts.

David Boclair at the City Paper tries to set realistic expectations for Pred fans for the draft in that whoever the Preds get in the first round will probably not play anytime soon.

Paul McCann talks about Michael Jackson on draft day. I was hoping this would be an MJ free column. Since it came up, my closest encounter with the odd one was when I was working the stage crew for three days at the Victory tour show at Neyland Stadium in August 1984. I can't say that I was ever a fan. Sorry, I have to be honest as is discussed in a link below.

@Sully26 tweets "I can't imagine how nervous those 18 year old boys are feeling in Montreal today. The beginning of all their dreams starts this weekend."

Here is Tom Calahan's video preview of the draft from Preds.com.


Around the NHL...

All Habs has a great response to Pierre McGuire and his apparent dislike for hockey bloggers. Most writers that I read are accountable to their readers and would not intentionally mislead or lie to their readers. As the MSM shrinks, bloggers and podcasters fill the void and provide content not found elsewhere. Anyone who is not accountable to their readers and themselves will not have a readership for very long. Some bloggers (Forechecker for example) provide original content that is not available anywhere else at any price. It's the new media, and those who don't embrace it and/or try to fight it will perish.

Gary Bettman sent an open letter to Coyote fans in conjunction with the Coyote open house Thursday night which appears to have been a huge success wit up to 4000 fans in attendance. Here is a TSN story that is encouraging to the loyal Phoenix fans.

Follow up on Twitter @PredsOnTheGlass for ongoing updates.

More later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

Additions...

Most updates today will be via Twitter...

John Glennon at Inside Predators takes one last stab at what the Preds will do. It includes a quite from yesterday, ``Based on our list and our confidence level, it looks like we’ll be drafting at Number 11,’’ Preds general manager David Poile said late Thursday. ``I never say never, but it doesn’t feel like we’ll be moving up or down. But things can change when players get taken ahead of you.’’

Tipped off by Mirtle to "A huge list of all the NHL mock drafts available"