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.

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• Here's Tim Thomas backstage at Wednesday night's ESPY Awards likely after pumping the tires of Jay Leno because really, who laughs at a Leno joke? [Getty]

BREAKING: The Chicago Blackhawks have announced that Patrick Kane will have surgery on his left wrist and will miss the next 6-8 weeks. He's expected to be fully healthy by training camp.

• After Tim Connolly was slagged in the Toronto Sun earlier this week, former teammates including Ryan Miller came to his aid telling James Mirtle, "I think some people in the media [in Buffalo] felt like he owed them explanations beyond what he cared to share, and it just became a little bit of a vendetta." [Globe & Mail]

• Big media news yesterday as it was announced that Pierre LeBrun would be taking his talents to TSN, while keeping his writing gig with ESPN.com. LeBrun

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New coach Kevin Dineen was expecting the Florida Panthers to add some players in the offseason. Admittedly, he didn't expect the combination of trades and free-agent signings that brought about a dozen new faces to the Panthers' roster, many of them high-profile names.

He said the guy who hired him, GM Dale Tallon, began clearing salary cap space last season; and that, in the end, it comes down to how each player can help the team.

"You can't just do it to do it," said Dineen.

It's Dineen's first NHL job, after a 19-year playing career with stops in Hartford and Philadelphia as well as his six years as head coach of the AHL Portland Pirates. And with the money the team spent in the offseason, the expectations are on Dineen to turn this franchise's fortunes around.

We spoke with him on Thursday about the Panthers' offseason; the chemistry challenges new players present; his coaching style; his goaltending; what he learned from being rejected from other gigs; and three questions that

On Thursday, two strange tweets showed up on the Twitter page of New York Rangers center Brad Richards that made it seemed like yet another professional athlete had their account hacked.

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We suspected either someone was either framing Tommy Lee of Motley Crue or the drummer best known for documenting his, ahem, exploits with Pam Anderson had become a super hacker.

Turns out Richards was still logged into his account from his New York City hotel and with the Crue on tour in the Northeast, Lee just happened to hop on the right computer and played Good Samaritan by informing the Rangers' star of his goof, while signing him out at the same time.

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Richards later found out it really was Lee and told him he was definitely coming to a Rangers game at some point this season.

So next time you forget to sign out of your Twitter account in a big city hotel, rest assured that some member of a 1980s hair band will rescue you.

After showing off their white road sweaters at the NHL draft last month, the Nashville Predators unleashed their new gold-colored home jerseys at their "Skate of the Union" event on Wednesday.

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Personally, we're fans of the gold. Big time.

The aim for any jersey change, besides having the chance to print money thanks to your swag-hungry fans, is to create something lasting and iconic. Nashville became synonymous with the color last postseason, the most successful run in franchise history. Carrying it over to the new sweaters feels right, and the overall motif is like nothing else in the NHL right now.

(Best of all: They don't resemble spicy mustard.)

But we can't go all the way on these … because of those numbers (see image on left). It's the guitar strings. They just don't feel right, at least at the moment. It's like if the San Jose Sharks had giant bites taken out of their numbers. It's a little hokey.

Chris from Icethetics loves what the Preds have done:

Reaction was largely

115974540When it comes to dolling up our hockey sticks, most of us have our own special way to get things feeling just right. A pro stick rack is a testament to the various opinions out there on what makes a twig function best.

It takes awhile to come to a final conclusion on what your bread and butter is after years of experimenting. (Remember that crazy night in college you tried to tape your blade horizontally? Yeesh.) But once you get there, you just know it.

I got there around my senior year at UAA, and I'll never go back.

Today I'm going to discuss what I settled on, and we can bat around what about my choices makes me an idiot, and why your set-up is better. Fun!

I like a healthy….OK, a really healthy no-loft curve. I grew up using the Coffey (Sherwood PMP) and Yzerman (Easton) curves, which were basically the same hook Ilya Kovalchuk was rumored to have his friends buying out of retail shops for him because the Atlanta Thrashers (wisely) wouldn't buy him the illegal curve he liked years

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.

RICH

• Brad Richards of the New York Rangers may have had his Twitter feed hacked on Thursday, although as of 3 p.m. ET the posts were still on his feed. The @mrtommyland handle is that of Tommy Lee of Motley Crue … who is either being framed here or is a hacker on the level of Zero Cool.

• Speaking of Twitter, remember Michael Duco, who called the Sedins divers before being traded to the Vancouver Canucks? He's now issued his second apology: "To the players, fans, and organization, I would like to apologize and I hope that you can forgive me." [Sports Network]

• Honored we made Sports Illustrated's Twitter 100 as one of about six hockey voices. Thanks again to everyone here who follows us there and puts up with occasional images of beer and movie trailer links. [SI]

• Troy Brouwer's shoulder surgery might leave him as

111361882Jacques Lemaire would be, in several ways, the perfect coach for the 2011-12 New Jersey Devils.

He commands respect, both as a Hall of Fame player and as a coach with the Stanley Cup ring. He knows the organization and the tenets of Lou Lamoriello hockey. He managed to turn this ill-fitting collection of high-priced veterans and talented young players into a winning hockey team during the second half of last season.

Most of all, he's a short-term solution for a win-now team, whose legendary goaltender is in the last year of his contract.

All of these reasons factor into why Devils fans had been hounding Bergen Record beat writer Tom Gulitti with questions about Lemaire and the potential for him to come back for one more season with the Devils.

Gulitti went to the source, and got a definitive answer from the former New Jersey coach:

With the general manager Lou Lamoriello dragging out the decision to hire Lemaire's successor, some viewed that as an indication that Lamoriello might be