So….I’ve got nothing of interest to report at the moment.  But I thought I’d share some stories of interest from some other sources.

Aaron Sims talks about what forwards we may have in Milwaukee this season, and it’s tough not to get excited by the list.

Section 303 did some interviews with some of those players that may get some playing time in Milwaukee this season.  Check out what they had to say.

Victor Bartley

Mike Latta

Ryan Ellis

Taylor Beck

A profile-piece on Ryan Ellis from nhl.com.  Is that a GI Joe reference at the end of it?

That’ll do for today.

Oh yeah.  And Sutty says “Hi”.

News from Ads camp!

Scott Ford has agreed on a contract for another season, and forward Chris Cahill will be back this season as well.

I give thumbs up to both of these.  Fordo will provide some veteran leadership on a blue line that will probably look a lot different than it did last year.  He’s not getting any faster, and he has been a part of some ho-hum fights lately….but his size and leadership will be assets this year.  He has to be the front-runner to wear the “C” at this point.

The general consensus from readers here was that they liked Cahill’s energy from the two games that they saw him in with the Admirals last season.  We’ll see if he’s ready to take the next step.

Did you know…

…that the Predators and Admirals have the third longest active affiliation streak in the AHL?

The Admirals are the only AAA affiliate the Predators have ever known, going back to their inaugural season in 1998.  This puts them only behind the Hartford Wolfpack/Connecticut Whale – New York Rangers relationship (since 1997), and the Providence Bruins – Boston Bruins relationship (since 1992).

Obviously, there are lots of great things about a long relationship like that.  Milwaukee has a lot to offer the Preds, or any NHL affiliate.

“We have built a very strong and successful relationship with Nashville that has been mutually beneficial,” Admirals Team President Jon Greenberg says.  “Our ownership group and front office staff have worked hard to make this a destination for potential players with not only a first-class facility in the Bradley Center but also a Major League city to live and work.”

But how does the Milwaukee – Nashville relationship differ from those other two long-standing duos?

Travel.

It takes a little less than 2 and a half hours to drive from Hartford to NYC.

It takes an hour to drive from Providence to Boston.

It’s about a 9 and a half hour drive from Milwaukee to Nashville.  It’s a two hour direct flight if you can get it.

From a roster management standpoint, there are obvious benefits to proximity: time and money.

The reason I bring all of this up, as reader BrianTheAdsFan had previously pointed out, there are rumors out there that the Predators want to move their affiliates closer to home.

The Predators had their annual Skate Of The Union address recently.  It’s a nice public relations thing the team does every summer where fans can get some face-time with management and coaches.  They talk about all parts of the franchise…business, player development, drafting, the ownership group, and there’s a Q&A session at the end.  It gives Nashville fans a reason to be excited about hockey in July.

Here’s where the story deviates a bit from on-the-record-fact to off-the-record-conversations-that-would-probably-would-not-hold-up-in court.

In the comments section of a post on ontheforecheck.com , a commenter shared this:

“I was able to catch Jeff Cogen last night.  Can’t let the Pred out of the bag….but expect to see our farm teams within a 3 hour driving distance in the near future. He mentioned 2 cities on the radar with hockey ready arenas that they are going for to get a more regional fan base. Hint…..One metro area just lost their team……”

Jeff Cogen is the Chief Executive Officer and alternate Governor of the Predators.  The commenter?  Hell if I know.  And thus we get to an unfortunate byproduct of the rise of blogs…..there’s a ton of information going back and forth on the superhighway, but it’s not always easy to verify it.

A Nashville – Atlanta relationship.  It’s tough to fault them if they are looking in to it.  Arena?  Check.  Heartbroken hockey fans looking for a new team to follow?  Check.  Just a four hour drive between the two cities?  Check.  Branding opportunities in the region?  Major check.  The Predators are already trying to market Preds hockey to the old Thrashers fan base.  And an affiliation agreement would certainly help that.

The thought of it feels kind of like a punch in the gut to Milwaukee fans.

Still, I can’t help but think that there are a lot more things that would need to happen in advance of this coming anywhere close to fruition.  For one thing, all 30 of the AHL teams are already owned, either by the parent club or locally.  For the Preds to be able to pick and choose an affiliate city in this fashion, they would likely need to purchase an existing AHL franchise, and then relocate that franchise.  True North owned the Manitoba Moose, and with their good fortune in landing the NHL team, they elected to move the Moose out east.  Good for them.

For an organization that some may describe as “frugal”, is this possible for Nashville?  Sure, it’s possible.  Is it likely?  I’m less confident that it’s likely.

The Admirals and Predators have one more year left on their current affiliation deal, so change isn’t exactly imminent.  But I don’t think there’s anything to panic about at the moment.  I think a lot more dominos will need to fall before there’s something to be worried about, and those dominos will be louder than some off-the-cuff comment from a Predators executive to an anonymous reader/commenter on a blog.

“The road to Nashville has gone through Milwaukee since 1998 and we expect that to continue for years to come with hopefully an affiliation extension right around the corner,” Greeny says.

Affiliation changes are not exactly uncommon in this league, and I think our long-standing affiliation bliss with the Predators should be viewed as the exception, and not the norm.  But I find Greeny’s comments very encouraging, and I hope we’ll be writing about an affiliation extension sometime this season.

Will he?  Won’t he?  Will he?  Won’t he?

He will.

The Badgers have announced that Craig Smith, who would have been a junior in Madison this year, has elected to turn pro this season.  There’s a great write-up of the announcement (and an audio interview as well) at ontheforecheck.com.

So now the $64,000 question is does he have a chance to break training camp with the Predators?  Reports are saying that he was one of the best on the ice during the development camp recently, and if he has a knack for the net in training camp, how hard do you think it’ll be for Poile and company to tell him that “The road to Nashville goes through Milwaukee”?

So Roundtable….where do you see him playing next year?  Anybody watch him regularly on Badger broadcasts this past season?

Aaron Sims is taking a look at who are some players we should expect in Milwaukee next season.  Part one of his epic miniseries addressed the goalies.  Read the story, and then come back here for some discussion.

1.  What would you like to see happen?

2.  What do you think will actually happen?

Charlotte in the Midwest Division?  Geographically, it’s a bit of a stretch, but we’ll make it work.

It’ll be nice to see some fresh blood at the Bradley Center this year, for sure.  The Charlotte Checkers are the AHL affiliate of the Carolina Hurricanes, and in their first year in the AHL last season, they went on a phenomenal playoff run.  They drew the defending champion Hershey Bars Bears in the first round, and upset the champs in six games.  They drew the best team in the east, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the next round, and disposed of them in another six games (here’s the box score for game 6….what a 3rd period!).  In the conference finals, they ended up being swept by the eventual Calder Cup winners, the Binghamton Senators.

For some more insight on the newbies in the conference, I sent some questions over to Jenni at the Chasing Checkers blog.

Admirals Roundtable:  How has the city of Charlotte embraced hockey, and how has the team embraced the city?  Do you find yourself defending the stance that hockey can survive in southern cities?  Does the newspaper give the team the time of day?  Local news?

Chasing Checkers:  Hockey first arrived in Charlotte in 1956, when the Baltimore Clipper’s barn burned down, and the team needed a place to play the last few games of the season.  The fans were so receptive to it that the team officially moved here the following season, and soon changed their name to the Checkers. The Checkers changed leagues a few times, most recently to the AHL after spending the previous 17 seasons as a member of the ECHL.  In a city that boasts an NFL team, an NBA team (who are both pretty terrible, I might add), NASCAR and AAA baseball, hockey often gets the smallest billing, but we are the only team that consistently has a winning record.  Our fans are pretty devout, and with only one year of the AHL under our belt, they’ve come a long way, and the fan base is growing by leaps and bounds.

Youth hockey is alive and well in Charlotte, and with our parent club only a few hours up the road in Raleigh, there is a lot of crossover between our AHL and NHL squads.  Charlotte is a great city and a great place for hockey.  The players love it here, and love the fans.  The team does a lot of outreach and community programs.  At our playoff rally in May, every player showed up, and even other local sports celebs (NASCAR drivers) to support their team, and none of them were asked or required to be there.

Unfortunately, the Checkers hardly get any true media coverage locally.  One local news-only TV station covers the team pretty regularly, but the Sports Director is a former hockey player so he is biased in a good way.  During the playoffs, the local newspaper didn’t bother sending a reporter to cover games, and even had the nerve to pick up a story written by a college student at Wilkes University, where he was editor of the school paper and the beat writer for the WBS Penguins.  I was horrified our Charlotte paper hired a college kid and Pens guy to write articles about our team in the playoffs!

AR:  What style of play did the Checkers employ?  Were they a high flying offensive machine?  Did they rely on their defense, goaltending, and toughness?

CC:  The first half of the season, the Checkers were a powerful offensive machine, with lots and lots of high scoring games, but they kind of refined themselves as the season passed by.    Our playoff run (until the final round) was filled with low scoring and no scoring games.  We had a battle of goaltenders, with Mike Murphy taking the reigns as our number one guy in the late months of the season, and he carried the team to the Eastern Conference Finals.  Murphy will be back this year, sharing time between the pipes with Justin Peters, who spent last season with the Hurricanes backing up Cam Ward.  We have a group of great, young prospects who are fast, and offensively powerful.  I wouldn’t say we relied on toughness. Our team enforcer and fan favorite Zack Fitzgerald is probably not going to return, but we have a new guy to fill his shoes in former Connecticut Whale tough guy Justin Soryal.  The team is a lot of fun to watch!

AR:  Do you expect that a lot of folks from last year’s playoff team will be back again this year?  Who are three players that should be on our radar?

CC:  Carolina tends to use their AHL team as a truly developmental team.  The Checkers rarely make big-name minor league signings just to boost the AHL club.  Last season, for example, all but two of our regular players were under contract with the Hurricanes (and we had another 3-4 guys on Carolina contracts who played in the ECHL).  We had a trio of young guys – Zac Dalpe, Zach Boychuck and Drayon Bowman, who all spent a lot of time in Raleigh, and it’s expected that 1-2 of them will make the big club out of camp. Other than that, the majority of our core is returning.  Our defense is very young, but very skilled.  Picking just three players is tough, but I’ll give it a shot!

Chris Terry – This will be his third season in the AHL, after playing for the Plymouth Whalers of the OHL.  He’s a defensively minded left wing who was also our leading goal-scorer, and ranked third in the league with 34 goals scored.  He’s a natural leader, and my personal pick for 2011/12 team captain.  He was dominant on the power play, and a big part of what made Charlotte’s PP so successful.

Justin Faulk – Faulk is a rookie this year, having spent the last two rounds of our playoff run with the team this past spring.  An American defenseman, he just turned 19, and after completing hisfirst year with the University of Minnesota – Duluth, decided to turn pro.  I guess when you win an NCAA title as a freshman there isn’t much more to accomplish at the University level!  He’s an incredible skater, and while I haven’t see him play THAT many games, each one impressed me a bit more than the last.  He’s definitely going to be a player to watch.

Brett Sutter – The Hurricanes like to collect Sutters… they’ve drafted two cousins (Brandon and Brody), and picked this one up in a trade last year with Calgary.  Brett is a center who really took off during the post season, racking up 14 points (4G, 10A) in 14 games played.  He’s a physical, in-your-face kind of player who skates hard, and plays even harder.  I really feel like this is going to be a break-out year for him.

I would have included Jacob MicFlikier who was with Charlotte last year on an AHL contract, but since he hasn’t re-signed YET, I can’t talk about his awesomeness.  Other honorable mentions of the “top three” to watch include netminder Mike Murphy and defensemen Michal Jordan, both who are entering their sophomore seasons.

AR: Do you have reservations about joining the western conference?

CC:  Honestly, I think it’s going to be a good opportunity for the Checkers.  In their inaugural season, they played in the toughest division in the league, and faced Hershey, Wilkes-Barre and Binghamton a total of 24 times.  Binghamton of course ended up winning the Calder Cup, and Hershey and WBS were arguably two of the top-teams in the league all season.  Moving to a division where only one team (Milwaukee) had a comparable record to our own should prove to be an advantage.  The Checkers are used to flying to most of their games (they did a lot of “Fly to Boston, bus to New England” trips), so that is nothing new.  I think playing teams with more recognizable cities like Chicago and Milwaukee will be good for Charlotte, too, simply because our media and some fans are still a bit green and might pay more attention than when we play teams based in Glenn Falls or Binghamton, NY.  I just hope that with challenges of time zones, extra travel, etc., that the AHL gods give us a favorable schedule, much like the ones they seem to give Rochester each year, that will allow us to continue to play in the Eastern conference some.

AR:  What prompted you to start your blog about the Checkers?

CC:  I have a professional background in sports, and always loved writing, and with the lack of regular media coverage on the team, I figured if I wanted to have info about my favorite team, the only way to get it was to find it myself.  I never dreamed how much the blog would take off, and that I’d meet great people from all over the country because of it.  It’s been a lot of fun.  It’s still a learning process… navigating the world of credentialed media, trying to provide readers with credible and interesting stories, etc., all the while having a crazy schedule and job that often takes me away from the breaking stories I’d love to cover, but I’m loving every minute.  I was only able to attend one road game last year, but hope to get to a number of them this season, and have plans to “cover” the preseason Hurricanes game from our prospect’s perspective.  I have a lot of ideas, and some things in the works for next season that will hopefully bring even more exciting things to my fellow fans in Charlotte!

The Predators were about to sign four restricted free agents prior to their hearing in New York today, which would have determined if the Preds did not send the qualifying offers in a timely manner.

Matt Halischuk and Nick Spaling — Two-year, one-way deals.

Cal O’Reilly — One-year, one-way deal.

Chris Mueller — One-year, two-way deal.

And as CreedFeed mentioned in the previous post, Alexander Sulzer signed with the Canucks.  I hope he breaks camp with the team, because the idea of seeing him in a Wolves uniform makes me throw up a little.

In other news…I met the Fonz at Summerfest last night.  Turns out Sam Jackson was right this whole time.  He’s cool.

(photo credit:  Scott Paulus)

Still no signings….but here’s a second trade.

Cody Franson and Matthew Lombardi have been traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs for defenseman Brett Lebda and forward Robert Slaney.

Lebda has a Stanley Cup ring.  So that’s nice, I guess.  Blogger Emeritus and resident Red Wings fan/correspondent Eric Kent offers these thougths on Lebda:  “Meh.  Neither physical nor overtly skilled.  When playing well, you won’t notice him.  When off, he’ll turn the puck over and lose battles”

Slaney has split time the last two seasons between the Toronto Marlies and the Reading Royals of the ECHL.  In his last year in juniors, he led the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles in goals and points, and was second in PIM’s.

Since then, his pro career hasn’t been anything to jump for joy about.  In the 09-10 season, he was a -20 defensively for the Toronto Marlies in just 34 games.  Granted, the Marlies gave up the second most goals in the conference that year…but still… That number is an eyesore.   Of the 1,152 players who played in the AHL that season, only 11 had a worse defensive rating, and they all did it over the course of at least 67 games.  Yuk.

Last season Slaney spent only 9 games with Toronto, and the rest in Reading.  In the playoffs, he stepped up a bit with a goal and three assists in four games.

Tough to say right now whether he’ll probably be ticketed to Milwaukee or Cincy.

But the $64,000 question is….why on earth did Brian Burke let the Predators off the hook for Lombardi’s contract?!?!?!

(photo credit: Scott Paulus)

Thanks to those who got this topic going in the previous post, while I was away from my computer yesterday…..

The Predators announced on Saturday that they traded forward Andreas Thuresson to the Rangers for Brodie Dupont — a 6’2 210 pound forward, who spent the majority of last season with the Hartford Wolfpack/Connecticut Whale.

Essentially…the teams swapped a pair of fourth year pros/RFA’s.

Feel free to disagree with me, but Thuressons ’10-’11 campaign was a huge disappointment.  The 30 game goal-less streak sticks out to me, and he seemed very disinterested out there at times.  We had seen him be a force on the ice in previous seasons, and the killer instinct didn’t seem to be there, for whatever reason.  I know Coach Lambert expected more out of a 4th year player like him.  But it had to be tough for Thuresson to sit back and watch all the other call-ups.  Off the ice, he was a great guy and was a great hockey embassador to the community….but hopefully a change of scenery will help jumpstart his career.

Dupont, 24 years old, was 3rd on the team in points (14g, 31a), and made his NHL debut with the Rangers….one game, no counting stats.

For those of you pining for a more physical presence on the team, you may find Dupont to be an upgrade over Thuresson.  Dupont looks like a guy that will drop the gloves to stand up for himself and to stand up for his teammates without any hesitation.

Again, he’s a restricted free agent right now, so he still needs to sign with the Predators before we start penciling him into the lineup down here.  But then again, with the lack of movement the Predators have displayed in the free agent period, heck, he may end up on the 4th line in Nashville next year if he signs!

The Predators are the only team in the league that hasn’t signed anybody since free agent season started on Friday.   Not true anymore!  Niclas Bergfors signed today (Sunday).

So Roundtable….are you sad to see Thuresson go?  Was the writing on the wall?  Excited to see what this Dupont kid can do?

(Photo Credit:  Scott Paulus)

Free agent frenzy began this morning at 11am, and all of the action from the Predators organization so far has been guys walking out the door instead of in the door…

Mark Dekanich signed a one-way deal with Columbus, per Aaron Portzline, who covers the Blue Jackets for the Columbus Dispatch.  Haven’t seen the contract numbers yet…but we’ll update the post when they are made public.  (UPDATE:  $575k is what is being reported…one-year deal.)

The Dispatch did a blog post about the signing this evening, and here are some highlights:

Dekanich’s anonymity coupled with Mason’s struggles over the past two seasons likely will unnerve some Jackets fans. You could almost here the fan base collectively asking, “Mark Who?” But Howson said he’s talked with AHL sources who had the 6-foot-2, 192-pound goalie on the same level as Washington’s prized prospect Brayden Holtby.

“We think he’s ready,” Howson said. “It’s a bit of a risk but we think he’s ready. Given what was available after a few hours, no doubt . . . There are top goalies in the American League who are ready for a chance . . . Eventually, these guys play. Why can’t they play here?”

So congrats to Dex, and congrats to Columbus and their scouts for doing their homework.  I think they’ll be pleased with the return on their investment.

Aaron Johnson signed a two-way deal with Columbus as well.  A return engagement in that organization.

Joel Ward is a Capital.  Steve Sullivan’s back is Penguins property.  Panther fans will now be the ones to mispronounce Marcel Goc’s name.

Stay tuned…