Hump Day Highlights

For your listening pleasure during this off-day between Predators games, I wanted to point you over to Hockeycentral at Noon, an essential hockey show from Fan 590 up in Toronto. On yesterday's installment (March 24), they conclude with a nice interview with Wade Belak. They delve into his on-ice triumphs this year (most notably the KO of Donald Brashear a few weeks ago) as well what the Predators are like to play for, from the perspective of a guy who's been around the NHL for a while now.

While you're listening to that, there's also some reading to catch up on. Ken Campbell of the Hockey News (found via Kukla's) writes about the extent to which players will give teams "home town discounts" in order to remain in one city, rather than seek top dollar somewhere else this summer. Typically, players unions have frowned on that practice, with the mindset that it depresses player salaries. For the Predators, this will be particularly important as Steve Sullivan heads into free agency. What value does he place on staying in Nashville, as opposed to what some team might offer for a legitimate NHL sniper?

As if having Jason Arnott out of the lineup for an extended period wasn't bad enough, John Glennon's afternoon blog title made me throw up in my mouth a little: "Preds hoping Legwand injury not serious."

The View from 111 reminds us of the upcoming Wine Tasting to benefit the Predators Foundation, and writes about what the Foundation, and the Predators players on their own, do on a regular basis for the community.

And in a fitting precursor to a glossary of advanced hockey statistics terminology that I have on my summer to-do list, there's a great article by Jonathan Willis over at Flames Nation that profiles Jim Corsi, a longtime goaltending coach and originator of the Corsi Number, one of the hallmarks of the trade and a good appromixator of whether a player is spending more time on offense or defense. You'll see Corsi numbers used quite a bit in this space, so it's a good primer.