Significance of Ryan Suspension

By now, everyone knows what happened. With under 4 minutes left in regulation, Nashville down by a goal after mounting what was shaping up to be an epic third period comeback, Bobby Ryan stomped on Jon Blum’s foot behind the Predators net. No call was made on the play and Ryan would score the empty net goal to seal the deal for the Ducks.

Saturday afternoon, Ryan was suspended for two games.

The suspension is significant for a multitude of reasons.

Anaheim loses a key component of its power-line for two games on the road. The loss would be more manageable at home with the Ducks controlling matchups, but they won’t have that ability for Games 3 and 4.

Bruins power forward recalls time in Junior with Predators defensemen

The Boston Bruins are the only team in the NHL that the Nashville Predators have never completed a transaction with since the Expansion Draft in 1998. But that doesn’t mean the teams don’t have any connections.

Take for example Milan Lucic, the Bruins leading goal scorer. The Vancouver native’s 53 points going into Saturday night’s tilt against Toronto is a season career-high. Lucic played junior hockey with Cody Franson and Jon Blum for the Vancouver Giants, winning a Memorial Cup together in 2007.

Lucic says he has a lot of good memories and good times shared with Franson and Blum, which makes playing against them at the NHL level “pretty cool.”

For Predators rookies, their futures are now

 

Two weeks before the trade deadline, the Nashville Predators acquired Mike Fisher from the Ottawa Senators for their 2011 first round draft pick as well as a conditional pick in 2012. Nashville then traded defenseman Alexander Sulzer to Florida for a conditional draft pick, leaving the Predators down to five healthy defensemen with Francis Bouillon out with a concussion.

In the meantime, it was announced that Marcel Goc was out for the season with his shoulder injury and Marek Svatos was waived and picked up by Ottawa.  Just a day after losing Svatos, however, Steve Sullivan was put on injured reserve.  These roster transactions left the Predators shy a healthy defensemen and a forward to complete their roster.

Jonathon Blum

The trade deadline came and went with the Predators standing pat. On February 22, four games before the trade deadline, Jonathon Blum got called up from Milwaukee. Two games later, and still two to go before the deadline, Blake Geoffrion joined Blum in Nashville.

The two highly touted Predators prospects are considered to be key parts of the organization’s future, but are now a part of its present, both playing in the NHL for the first time.

Rookies not deterred by one-way contracts

Tonight, the Nashville Predators rookies will be hitting the ice at Saveology.com Iceplex in Florida to take on the Panthers prospects. The game isn’t on tv or the radio, but when the puck drops at 6 p.m. CT, fans will be following as best as they can to have a first look at Nashville’s prospects in action–many for the first time in a Predators uniform while others are veterans to the rookie-camp scene.

The big battle at camp is who will be the backup to Nashville’s starting goalie, Pekka Rinne, when the puck drops on the Predators’ season October 9th at Bridgestone Arena. Goaltending battles aside, because the Predators have drafted many quality defensemen over the years, some returnees to the rookie training camp are highly drafted experts on the back end of the rink.