TGIF Edition for Mid-July

A long week is finally winding down as is the news in the hockey world. Here are a few morsels to munch on as you wait for Friday to slowly come to an end and the weekend to begin.

In Pred Nation...

Still a lot of schedule talk going on and Puck Daddy gives kudos to Dirk Hoag on his annual miles traveled analysis. The analytics on Dirk's site went through the roof as indicated at Sitemeter.com. It's great to see him get that many views for something that folks have come to expect from him each year. Dirk has an extensive round up of stories this morning at On The Forecheck.

John Glennon wraps up a few odds and ends before taking a few days off. Ryan Jones, Cal O'Reilly and Kelsey Wilson did not accept the Pred's qualifying offer. Yesterday we heard from Admiral's Short Shifts that Wilson may be headed to Europe.

More information on the newest Predator, Peter Olvecky from On The Forecheck.

For the second day in a row, the Sharks have picked up an ex-Pred. This time it was Jed Ortmeyer. John Glennon's Ortmeyer story is here.

According to Dru's Views Pete Weber will speak at the Nashville Kiwanis Club on August 7 at 11:30 AM at the Maxwell House.

Around the NHL...

As a final wrap-up from the Winter Classic news conference, here is a photo slide show from the Flyers of different looks around Fenway Park with the faux rink in the mid field. Puck Daddy also had a post about the Classic with the thought of a major donnybrook breaking out. Will the Flyers play any games next season where there's not a good chance for high numbers of penalty minutes?

In Phoenix, Wayne Gretzky agreed to submit to a deposition by the City of Glendale. The circus in the desert continues to entertain during the slow summer months.

Petr Sykora appears done in Pittsburgh as Brian Metzer explains. He has some tough words for ex-teammate and current coach Dab Bylsma.

The Puck Stops Here looks at team Corsi numbers over at Kukla's.

Ok, this is really odd. From Nathan Fournier comes the U-17 USA Select Roster. The weird part is that these guys are younger than my oldest son, Fisher. He's almost grown (some of the time).

While we are on the prospects, the 2009 draft is done so the attention is turned to next June and the new crop. The camps are goint to open soon in Junior hockey in Canada. Europe has a good crop too. Here are the North Americans and Europeans to watch.

We had the Hitler/Dany Heatley video yesterday and the Puck Report shows that there are a bunch of the same video with different subtitles covering from Michael Jackson to Twitter plus a bunch more on Hockey. (Warning: most are still R rated)

Puck Report also has a history of games played per team each year since 1917. After looking at this, you realized that there could be another number than 82 to consider.

Happy Birthday wishes to Mark Willoughby from The View From 111 and Tweetup organizer George Scoville who is fixing to move to DC.

More later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

Additions...

For those of you who are NASA fans, here is a site that is recreating the entire Apollo 11 moon landing mission at the exact time that it occurred forty years ago.

Here's another OT post from the AZ Republic on the new bridge being built to replace the drive across Hoover Dam on the road heading in to Las Vegas from Arizona. As much trouble as they have has in the nine year construction project it makes the effort to build Hoover Dam that much more impressive.

Mirtle takes a look at new info from the Jim Ballsille camp in the Phoenix relocation application. I still think long term that as part of any out come of this situation that an expansion team for Canada will come in to play. Mirtle ends his discussion with a similar point. The Globe and Mail also has a related discussion.

More complements for Dirk Hoag from Stu Hackel at the NYT in his post about the schedule. One line include the phrase "The great Nashville blogger Dirk Hoag (”The Forechecker”)". Dirk responds on Twitter "Wow, it looks like I need to put a check in the mail!". As Nashville and other "non-traditional markets" try to gain credibility in the Hockey world, any mentions about one of our own goes a long way in doing so. Thanks to Dirk for always doing a good job.