Getting ready for the weekend

We'll get back to heavy Predators-related analysis next week with individual player post-season reviews, but until then, here's a few stories worth following:

• The Russians beat Team USA with less than two minutes to play in the Semifinal at the Hockey World Championships. Alexander Radulov's wrister was deflected in off of teammate Konstantin Gorovikov for the winner.
  
• Radulov & friends will take on Shea Weber, Dan Hamhuis, Barry Trotz and the rest of Team Canada in the gold medal game. The Americans will play for the bronze medal against Sweden, which lost to Canada in the other semifinal 3-1.
  
• Scott Nichol and Jordin Tootoo are participating in Eric Yutzy's celebrity bowling tournament to raise money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society next Thursday, May 14. For $125, you can team up with various celebs from around Nashville. It sounds like a great time.
• Stu Hackel of the New York Times Slap Shot blog digs into the many problems with Jim Balsillie's approach to NHL ownership. If he were American, and trying to move the Coyotes to Kansas City, I'm sure he'd be ripped to shreds by the hockey MSM.
• Mirtle has a look at current Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes, from how he came to acquire the team to why he's in such a mess today.
• After getting shutout 2-0 by Houston Thursday night, the Milwaukee Admirals are on the brink of elimination in the AHL playoffs.

Also, I wanted to take the opportunity to quote something from SB Nation's Vancouver blog, Nucks Misconduct, on how you, the users of this site, can participate. If you have something to say about the playoffs so far, or what you think the Preds should do over the summer with free agency, I encourage you to create a FanPost and get your thoughts out there for the rest of us to chew on:

- Use the Tags, Teams and Players functions to the right of your post. It's to your benefit because it helps Google spiders (bots-whatever, I'm not a total hack) crawl your post and more viewers will be reached than just everyone here at Nucks Misconduct. Be as thorough as possible.

If you enter: 2009 nhl playoffs in the tag section, your post will show up on the Sportblogs Nation playoff hub, which is extra cool.

The way SB Nation is set up, the FanPosts and FanShots get included on the individual player and team pages as well, so it's a great opportunity to get your words in front of a broad audience. So go ahead and make yourself heard!