wouldn't that be a little obvious?

Nevermind.
The Tennessean is back at it. Being scooped to any real story about the Predators by the lowly City Paper. The Tennessean has yet another article about fans being fearful of uncertainty due to lack of communication with our future owner. While the city paper has an article about an upcoming meeting between the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and the Predators organization.

Quote from the City Paper article:

"Time is of the essence here, it seems to me," Chamber of Commerce president Ralph Schulz said this morning. "The Predators have got to sell their season tickets, but the degree to which we can help them position their ticket sales and create the opportunities to talk to decision makers, and so forth and so on, we really want to do."

I'm excited about this and loving it. More evidence of the community stepping up to keep the team in place.

However, the City Paper article makes me think: why in the world is this news? Shouldn't the Predators organization have a meeting every off season with the Chamber of Commerce of Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin, and every city as far out as Murfreesboro? Not to mention every other business organization in the area. Even if they didn't in season 1, by the time the team started struggling to sell to businesses in, oh lets say season 3 or 4, they should have made this a common practice.

The marketing for businesses is still pathetic. The business sales website for the Preds has finally improved slightly, but one of the main features is still the pathetic 100 things to do with season tickets. Amazingly, at least two of the other teams in the league that have ticket sales problems, Chicago and New Jersey, don't have anything at all regarding business sales on their sites.

One more random thing that is interesting to contemplate: If this old post turns out to be true and Gary Bettman is replaced with Eddie Gossage, we could have an NHL commissioner from Middle Tennessee coming in just as the Predators may be looking to relocate. Bettman supports the Preds because they are one of his babies. I wonder what Gossage would think.

Last note: The first period of game 4 between the Senators and Ducks just ended...wow! That was a frantic, awesome, physical period of hockey. Giguere played lights out for most of the period, but finally allowed one in at the last second - literally. Emery was great as well. I hope the rest of the game and series are this good. And i love hockey in high definition. You can see the puck (thanks to resolution) and see plays develop (thanks to wide screen). I'd love to see the game in 720p instead of 1080i given the speed of the game, but at this point i guess i can't be that picky. :-)