(Ed. Note: As the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we're bound to lose some friends along the journey. We've asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The fans who hated them the most. Here is Detroit Red Wings blogger J.J. From Kansas, of Winging It In Motown, fondly recalling the Nashville Predators. Again, this was not written by us ... OK, by all of us. Also: This is a roast and you will be offended by it, so don't take it so seriously.)

By J.J. From Kansas, Winging It In Motown

Friends, cousins, country-men: We are gathered here to celebrate a death.

I know it sounds crass to do something so low as celebrate one's passing, but I think you'll find that a celebration is exactly what's in order. For you see, we're not here to celebrate the death of the Nashville Predators' season, but the death of the traditional Nashville Predators Eulogy.

This has traditionally been one of the hardest teams to eulogize at season's end because it's hard to build up hate for an underdog nobody. So we're here to bury jokes about Nashville only having 12 fans, and that is a good thing. Now that Preds fans number in the thousands, we just can't pull that tired trope back out for another victory lap.

But just as we go ashes to ashes and dust to dust, there's a certain beauty in the fledgling idea that, while Nashville has thousands of screaming and adoring fans, they still only share about 12 unique family genomes among them ...

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• Nashville, we miss you already …

• Well-written cynical piece by Michael Grange on the Greg Jamison ownership bid for Phoenix: "According to long-time Glendale city councilor Phil Lieberman, the terms of the deal being given to Jamison -- who has partners, apparently, but wouldn't name them -- basically see him guaranteed $306 million in management fees for Jobing.com Arena over the next 21 years, or an average of $14.6 million a year. A large chunk of that money is front-end loaded, with Glendale on the hook for $92 million over the next five years." [Sportsnet]

• Claude Giroux expects the Philadelphia Flyers to thrive without him in Game 5: "The whole season, we've been playing a team game. Everybody's been playing well together. The energy that we have in the room today, it's great. I'm pretty excited to see the guys play tonight." [CSN Philly]

• How the Devils were able to neutralize Giroux. [ILWT]

• The Flyers will get a boost from the return of Andrej Meszaros. [Broad Street Bull]

• Bourne says it's time for Ilya Bryzgalov to steal a game against the New Jersey Devils, even after he sorta almost did in Game 4. [Backhand Shelf]

• Mirtle on why the regular season matters: "Even with all the parity and overtime games, a top two team in the conference is still by far the most likely to get to the final four and eventually win. And part of what makes it look like so many upsets are happening every year is the way the NHL standings are structured, with teams being rewarded with undeserved No. 3 seeds struggling to get out of the first or second round." [Globe & Mail]

• The whole "NHL owns the Coyotes and the Coyotes can win the Cup so Bettman will give the Cup to himself" thing is pretty funny … until you realize there are non-hockey people who think this is actually going to happen. [SBN]

• More ESPN disrespect of the NHL. [Sherman Report]

• Here's a handy way to piss off fans of eliminated teams, courtesy of the NHL: Send them advertisements for golf gear on the day they're eliminated: "Didn't someone on the marketing team over at the NHL stop and think that they might be making a PR blunder? Didn't someone catch the fact that the joke of a team hitting the links isn't one the league should be making, especially when trying to peddle off some merch?" [Puck Drunk Love]

It's just assumed that certain regions have songs by their representative artists committed to memory: New Jerseyans and Bruce Springsteen, Canadians and Stompin' Tom Connors and, of course, the Swedish and ABBA.

To that end, perhaps the biggest surprise in the following video is that Gabriel Landeskog of the Colorado Avalanche and Victor Hedman of the Tampa Bay Lightning need any lyrical assistance at all. OK, actually, the biggest surprise is that these guys killed it on "S.O.S."

Hedman looks like a stoic Benicio Del Toro being forced to perform Swedish karaoke until the end, when he raises his arms and gives an Arsenio "whoop whoop."

Landeskog, however, is using a complicated cross-leg toe tap to keep time and, frankly, is the better singer who looks like he knows his way around a Benny Andersson/Björn Ulvaeus tune.

That friends, is the stuff of a Calder winner. Your move, Nuge; may we suggest "Waterloo"?

Meanwhile … ATT: NHL. Hedman. Landeskog. Talbot. Simmonds. Sing-off, dance-off. Ratings gold.

It's a Tuesday edition of Marek vs. Wyshynski beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, and we're talking about the following and more:

Special Guest Stars: Josh Cooper of The Tennessean joins us for the Predators post-mort; former NHL defenseman Brad Marsh joins us to talk about the playoffs, the Norris and cycling.

• In which Marek and Wysh discuss the heartbreaking loss for the Washington Capitals in Game 5.

• The Coyotes are victorious on and off the ice?

• NHL fans getting punked by their teams.

• Puck Headlines and Talking Points

Question of the Day: TBA

Email your answers to puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or tweet them with the hashtag #MvsW to either @jeffmarek or @wyshynski.

Click here for the Sportsnet live stream or click the play button above! Click here to download podcasts from the show each day Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Feedburner.

Getty ImagesJoel Quenneville, leaving the Chicago Blackhawks for the Montreal Canadiens? All the evidence was pointing in that direction.

He had lost two allies in the Chicago front office in Dale Tallon, who hired him as coach and is now the GM in Florida, and Marc Bergevin, who helped get Quenneville his initial scouting gig with the Blackhawks and is now the GM with the Canadiens.

Meanwhile, the Blackhawks were eliminated in Round 1, Quenneville was on the hot seat during a regular-season losing streak and he was allegedly having some friction with management.

So Coach Q to the Habs looked like a distinct possibility, save for one factor:

His general manager in Chicago expects Quenneville will coach the Blackhawks in 2012-13.

From Chris Kuc of the Chicago Tribune:

When asked Monday if Joel Quenneville would return as the team's coach next season — despite growing whispers that new Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin would somehow orchestrate things so his close friend would leave the Hawks and join him as Montreal's coach — Bowman said he was committed to Quenneville.

"Yeah, I think we made that clear at the end of the year, that we're trying to look forward and get better as a group," Bowman told the Tribune. "But I don't talk about rumors. I haven't and I don't want to start now."  Just to clarify, the question was broached again if Bowman anticipated Quenneville, whose contract runs through 2013-14, coaching the Hawks next season.

The GM chuckled and said: "Yes."

So is Quenneville set for the Blackhawks in 2012-13? It could depend on the conditions, and his own desire to stay.

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Had Phoenix Coyotes goalie Mike Smith sent the puck into an empty net across the ice in the waning moments of Game 5, it would have been wholly appropriate.

His stonewalling of opponents is the reason the Coyotes have advanced to their first Western Conference Final; and scoring a goal against the Nashville Predators would have been the ultimate insult to a team that struggled all series to score one on him.

Despite being the higher seed in their semifinal victory, there's a sense that the Coyotes are playing with house money in this postseason — perhaps due to their ownership situation or salary structure or low expectations, decades in the making.

The Nashville Predators, on the other hand, are a franchise that went all-in for a Stanley Cup run that lasted two rounds and 10 games. It's a franchise facing a window of opportunity that may have inched toward closing, depending on what Ryan Suter and Shea Weber decide about their future (and what GM David Poile decides about them).

The Predators have been in the Coyotes' position before — shocking the world, livin' the dream, happy to be there. It's a credit to the maturity of the franchise and its fans that those are no longer satisfactory expectations. On The Forecheck's poll of Predators fans found 68-percent of over 200 respondents were disappointed with the season's results.

In a 2012 Stanley Cup Playoff push for a championship, the Predators fell unexpectedly and insufficiently short. What went wrong?

Getty ImagesThis is Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kate Upton. She's, like, famous and stuff, and she digs hockey. She can also out-chirp Sean Avery, which ranks at least third or fourth among her greatest assets.

Thanks to the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings excelling in the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs, we've been blessed with a higher amount of Hollywood star wattage than we've had in years during the NHL postseason.

It used to be that celebrities at playoff hockey games meant Alan Thicke and hoping that Cuba Gooding, Jr. got a free evening from shooting "Snow Dogs 2" to watch a first-round game. Now, we've got Kobe Bryant and David Beckham on one coast, Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman in Nashville, and Liam Neeson and Snooki from "Jersey Shore" at MSG. That's right — Snooki. Your move, NBA.

Here's a full gallery of famous people doing famous people things during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, along one photo of Richard Marx (click on any one for more info about them):

And now, a quick list of The Five Most Random Celebrities Watching the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Besides Richard Marx …

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"This was an avail that I think has been speculated about and overhyped," said Commissioner Gary Bettman, as he stood at a podium an hour before the most important game in Phoenix Coyotes history, at a press conference the NHL arranged, in order to detail whether the Coyotes would finally have an owner to spare them from relocation.

"We had a series of meetings this afternoon with Greg Jamison and the city of Glendale, and basically the status of things is that we have an understanding with Greg Jamison that we're going to proceed with he and his group to reach a formal agreement for the purchase and sale of the Coyotes," said Bettman.

"While Greg is working on that with us, he's also going to simultaneously look to conclude an agreement with the city of Glendale"

In essence, this was Greg Jamison's debut as the latest suitor for the Coyotes — the fourth public one by any measure save for Bettman's, who disagreed with the number. The former COO of the San Jose Sharks, Jamison said he has a "group that's excited about going forward as the owners of the Phoenix Coyotes. We have a group that cares deeply about the National Hockey League, about hockey and about youth hockey."

Who's in is group? Jamison will reveal it at a later date. What's the timeline for completing the deal? Bettman wouldn't give a date, but hoped it was weeks rather than months. Will there be an out clause in whatever lease agreement Jamison's group strikes with the city of Glendale? It wasn't asked.

So the press conference didn't tell us much. But it happened. And that's real takeaway on Monday night — that the NHL felt comfortable enough with the bid, the financing and the progress with the city behind the scenes to announce a tentative agreement an hour before Game 5 between the Coyotes and Nashville Predators.

We've had so many false starts, so many dead ends in this 2-year ordeal that the process invites cynicism. The finish line is visible, but it's surrounded by quicksand and landmines and quicksand with land mines in it (that's, like, really dangerous). The NHL is laying it on the line with everyone from the media to Coyotes fans: Be cynical, be cautious, but this time it's going to be different.

"The future we believe is very bright," said Jamison.