In Case You Weren't Paying Attention (or Why Juuso Puustinen is The Boy Who Destroyed The World)

There have been some small, yet important, happenings in the world of Nashville Predators hockey. Now, there are some great blogs out there with some talented and highly knowledgeable folks doing all the writing and analysis. I try not to tread on their toes because there are way to many of them and you people don’t need another person telling you all about what has already been covered. Fortunately, this frees me to dig in and find out what is really going on behind the curtain. Some may recall when I revealed Ollie Jokinen as the reason for the numerous injuries to Predators’ centers. Others may recall the exemplary passable accuracy of my playoff predictions that I channeled through the nearby shelves of assorted objects of nerdy goodness. Well, now I’m applying my considerable skills to interpreting some of the recent bits of Preds news.

Clearly not Shea, that beard is so weak

First I will touch on the major topic at hand. GM Poile filed for salary arbitration with Shea Weber. This news was quickly met with panic and rioting from which the city of Vancouver will not soon recover. Thankfully the bloggers that be revealed that this was a strategic move in order to extend negotiation time with Weber’s new manager. Actually, I should say Weber’s new manijer. I don’t assume that the guy is an idiot; I just assume he’s really into a phonetic and alternative spelling cult. I don’t really see much news here unless anyone spies Weber wearing a #6 Ché Webrrr jersey next season. If that is the case he’s either joined the spelling cult or he’s joined a high school political hardcore band.

Second, we found out that 2010 1st round draft pick Austin Watson have been invited to the USA Hockey World Junior Development Camp. I doubt I’m alone in thinking that the 19-year-old Austin is a tad on the old side to be attending summer camp. At the very least he should be a counselor with the shitty pay, slightly nicer bunk, and wacky summer hijinks that go along with the job.

LOOK AWAY!!!

The last exciting pieces of news that came out were the signing of Finnish forward Juuso Puustinen and the contract extension for Teemu Laakso. I chalk the Juuso Puustinen up as Mr. Poile’s yearly shot-in-the-dark signing that in the past has given us such talent as the recently departed Linus “Mr. Splits” Klasen or Jonas “Who?” Andersson. It seems that main difference between past signing and the Puustinen signing is two fold. The first is that Juuso Puustinen is a much more fun name say once I figure out how to say it. The second is that wear Linus and Jonas are both Swedes, Juuso is Finnish, so there’s that. The contract extension for Teemu is clearly a move by Poile to ensure that the Predators have a 7th defenseman on the books that we can trade away for a conditional 7th round draft pick late in the 2011-2012 season. The advantage that Teemu had over Sulzer is that the contract is two-way, so there is an equally good chance he’ll just fester away in Milwaukee before getting shipping to Florida.

That is all for now. I’m going to back to staining my hands blue with cheap acrylic pain. Any tips on how to get paint flecks out from underneath one’s fingernails? It currently looks like my fingers are suffering from Argyria.