What a weekend in Nashville for music fans… almost 200,000 expected to attend the CMA Fan Fest, another 80,000 expected to see Springsteen and Phish at Bonnaroo…

For hockey fans, it’s a roll up of these two music fests, the Super Bowl and any other big event… it’s a game 7… in the finals. For only the 15th time in NHL history, hockey fans go into a game with certainly that the Cup will be won that night. While Game 7's in the finals are a rarity over the history of the league, there was only one per decade between 1971 and 2000, Friday night’s decider will be the fifth of the 2000’s.

This series may go down as a game changer for the NHL on TV. Ratings for this series have been up… way up. Versus dominated US cable ratings for games 3 and 4, registering a 42% increase in ratings year over year and notched its’ first time as the most watched cable network in the country. Despite their tin ear to fans in Pittsburgh and Detroit, NBC is also registering excellent ratings for their coverage. I would expect those to increase even more on Friday night.

In stark contrast to the almost unwatchable NBA Finals, this series has had flow and has been decided by the players, not the boys in stripes. The best of hockey has been on display during this series. Everything the passionate hockey fan loves about the game.

Now if only NBC would figure out that JoeVision has been in place for almost 15 seasons and knock off this stupidity of not allowing teams to show the game to crowds outside of the arenas, y’know, like Versus allowed in Pittsburgh during games 3 and 4… and still registered record ratings.

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As we speculated last night on HockeyBuzz Radio… Marc Crawford will be introduced as the new head coach of the Dallas Stars this afternoon.

I know the old saying about a “new broom sweeps clean” however, Dave Tippet is one helluva hockey coach that was given a really bad hand last year… one that was forced on him by some silly mistakes by the former GM (COUGH) Sean Avery (COUGH)… Tippet should land on his feet, he’s too good a coach to stay on the sidelines for long.

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A big thank you to Pete Weber for co-hosting last night’s HockeyBuzz Radio. I’d also like to thanks Preds color man Terry Crisp, Penguin’s blogger Brian Metzer and Ft Worth Star-Telegraph hockey writer Tracey Myers for her input on the firing of Stars coach Dave Tippet.

The podcast is posted… www.hockeybuzzradio.com/index_files/podcast.htm

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You are invited to follow me on Twitter. Search for PredPAPaul… Not only will I be updating when I get news or updates… I’ll also be updating during Pred home games in season with information and explanations from the PA box.

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Join Brandon Felder and me for the fastest hour in radio… HockeyBuzz Radio... Wednesday night’s through July 1st. Start time is 6pm on SportsRadio 560 WNSR, you can listen online at www.wnsr.com or you can download the podcast of the show at www.hockeybuzzradio.com

Don't forget to check out www.hockeybuzzradio.com for playoff schedules, playoff standings, updates, links to more hockey and Predators information along with our new weekly feature called “On the Mark” featuring opinions on all things hockey from hockey writer Mark McGee.

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