• We thank Jeff Vinik, the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning, for choosing a slow news day to announce the hiring of Steve Yzerman as the "world class" franchise's next general manager.
• Who knew that the Calgary Flames were considering Yzerman as a potential candidate? It looks like Darryl Sutter will get another chance to fix up the Flames now.
• Speaking of Albertan teams that need a fix, Edmonton Oilers' general manager Steve Tambellini still isn't saying who he plans on picking first overall come June 25.
• Before we head back south to the United States, Down Goes Brown and Bloge Salming eulogize the Montreal Canadiens in what is one of the best eulogies I have ever seen.

• Brendan Shanahan thinks the Philadelphia Flyers should use Kimmo Timonen (5-10, 194), instead of Chris Pronger (6-6, 230), against defenseman-turned-forward Dustin Byfuglien (6-4, 257). Speed and quickness, as Shanahan says, will be more important than size. Just ask the Canucks or the Sharks, two teams that countered Byfuglien with size - it created a larger screen in front of Roberto Luongo and Evgeni Nabokov, respectively.
• Peter Laviolette, on the other hand, said that Pronger and Byfuglien are "sure [to] see a lot of each other". Good luck in advance, Michael Leighton.
• Bobby Ryan scored 35 goals this season and is finally making a name for himself. No longer known as "the guy drafted right after Sidney Crosby", Ryan is in for a big raise this offseason after making less than a million dollars this past season. James O'Brien takes a look at how much Ryan is worth - Jordan Staal money? Ryan Getzlaf money? Nicklas Backstrom money?
• Scott Reynolds over at The Copper & Blue looks at how teams have fared when drafting goaltenders from 2003 to 2005; your Penguins are ranked eighth in the league.
• According to a report by Derek Zona, Sidney Crosby scored 9.1 more goals this season than his expected total. It puts him fifth in the league, behind Mikael Samuelsson (14.1), Jussi Jokinen (11.2), Alexandre Burrows (10.1), and Stephen Weiss (9.3).
• And over in the world of baseball, David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox became the first player this year to "break" the 30-second barrier on a home run trot. By comparison, Adam Rosales, of the Oakland Athletics, rounded the bases in 15.89 seconds on April 28; it took Ortiz 16.39 seconds to touch second base.

Stanley Cup Final previews and more coverage will likely start showing up in the links here tomorrow. Once again, I'll likely add a few more links throughout the day as I go through my daily reads.

Welcome to the second edition of "Fish for Breakfast". There's not a lot of Penguins' news to talk about, but with the scouting combine getting underway this week, there will hopefully be more news about our team tomorrow.

• The Philadelphia Flyers got past the Montreal Canadiens to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. No, Michael Leighton didn't pick up his fourth shutout of the series, but he was good enough to lead his team to a 4-2 win in the decisive Game 5. Get the full recap from the Canadiens' perspective here or take a look at the game from the Flyers' standpoint.
• Flyers' captain Mike Richards not only touched the Prince of Wales Trophy, awarded to the Eastern Conference champion, but took it into the locker room. Of course, this happens the day after Blackhawks' captain Jonathan Toews barely looked at the Clarence Campbell Trophy. His reason? The Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup after Sidney Crosby hoisted the trophy in 2009.
• The Stanley Cup Finals start Saturday when the Chicago Blackhawks host the Flyers at the United Center. The game will be broadcast on NBC, CBC, and RDS, and the start time for the entire series is 8:00 pm EST.
• A bit of old news here, but it’s not all that outdated. Colin White, a defenseman with the New Jersey Devils, was reportedly asked by coach Jacques Lemaire to wear the captain's "C" in an April 3 game when captain Jamie Langenbrunner was a healthy scratch; White refused to wear the "C". That's like Dan Bylsma asking Bill Guerin to wear the "C" if Sidney Crosby was scratched for a game, instead of just adding a third alternate captain. Heck, if Lemaire really wanted a captain that night, he should have first offered it to either one of the alternate captains, Patrik Elias or Zach Parise.
  Update: Lemaire defends his decision saying "I'm the one coaching... this is how I do things."

• Dustin Byfuglien of the Blackhawks is not only emerging as a top power forward this playoffs, but has let the world know through NHL.com headlines that both his first and last names are "incredibly useful in making awesome puns".
• Steven Ovadia of Puck Daddy takes a quick look at who the eliminated teams root for in the playoffs. For example, the Anaheim Ducks have quickly shifted from cheering for the Boston Bruins over the Flyers last round to rooting for the Flyers in the Stanley Cup Finals. A Stanley Cup by Philadelphia will net the Ducks a fourth-round draft pick as a condition in the Chris Pronger trade. Anaheim had previously hoped the Flyers would fall to the Bruins as the Ducks own the Flyers' first round draft pick this year, also acquired as part of the Pronger deal. The first round selection will now be either 29th or 30th overall with the Flyers advancing to the Finals, instead of the 15th overall pick.
• The New York Islanders have cancelled a previously scheduled nine-day trip in mid-September to China, after owner Charles Wang became angry when the NHLPA started their standard protocol of "making sure logistics including arenas, transportation, and lodging met the union’s standards". The trip was supposed to cover a portion of the Islanders' training camp in Wang's home country as one of his several initiatives to promote hockey in China.

Again, I'd like to remind you that you can comment below if you come across any interesting reads today. Thanks for reading!

Many hockey blogs, including countless right here at SB Nation, have posts every morning that include links to interesting reads gathered from all over the Internet. Since PensBurgh doesn't have any "breakfast links", I've decided to start the inaugural "Fish for Breakfast".

• Evgeni Malkin, Sergei Gonchar, and the rest of the Russian national team fell 2-1 to the Czech Republic in the gold medal game of the 2010 IIHF World Championships. Down 2-0, Malkin took a roughing penalty with 93 seconds left in the game. However, Pavel Datsyuk scored with 36 seconds left to cut the lead to one; Gonchar, who played a game-high 21:52, picked up the secondary assist.
• Malkin finished the tournament with 5 goals and 2 assists in 5 game, en route to being named by the media as one of the top three forwards.
• Gonchar had 4 assists in 5 games and played a team-high 19:17 of ice time per game. He finished tied for third among all defensemen in scoring.
• The Philadelphia Flyers return home to host the Montreal Canadiens in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals - faceoff is at 7:00 pm EST. Head over to either Habs Eyes on the Prize, if you're cheering for the Canadiens, who eliminated us in seven games last round, or Broad Street Hockey, if you decide to root for our cross-state rivals, the Flyers.

• Meanwhile, over in the Western Conference, the Chicago Blackhawks scored four unanswered goals after falling down 2-0 to sweep the San Jose Sharks. Marian Hossa will be the first player to play in the Stanley Cup Finals in three consecutive years with three different teams. Losing to the Detroit Red Wings with the Penguins in 2008 after being acquired from the Atlanta Thrashers at the trade deadline, he signed a one-year deal with Detroit in the 2008 offseason. As a member of the Red Wings, he then lost in the 2009 Finals to the Penguins. Will Hossa finally win the Cup this year?
• Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has another article about trading Evgeni Malkin this offseason. Same story, different writer; next.
• Earlier today, TSN reported that the Washington Capitals are prepared to offer upcoming unrestricted free agent Anton Volchenkov a contract with an annual salary in the neighborhood of $5 million (the article has since been removed). Is this good news for the Penguins, as the Capitals' budget to acquire a second-line center diminishes, or is it bad news, considering we didn't re-sign Hal Gill and Rob Scuderi last offseason? Voice your opinion on this FanPost by Wags24.

With Russia's 2-1 victory over the Germany, they move onto the gold medal game Sunday
and leapfrog past Canada for first place in the IIHF World Ranking. via www.iihf.com

2011 World Championship Participating Countries

Continue reading this post »

Rene Fasel, president of the IIHF. via www.vancouversun.com

What is the IIHF World Ranking?

The IIHF World Ranking is a tool to reflect the long-term quality of the countries' national team programme. The IIHF World Ranking is based on awarding points for the final positions in the last four IIHF World Championships and in the last Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament.

The 2010 IIHF World Ranking is thus based on the performance at the 2010, 2009, 2008, and the 2007 World Championship and at the 2010 Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament in Vancouver.

How are points awarded?

The team that wins the IIHF World Championship gold medal or the Olympic gold medal receives 1200 points. In general, there is a 20-point interval between two ranked positions.

For example, 1060 points are awarded for the 5th place team while 1040 points for the team finishing sixth.

As an exception to this principle there is a 40-point interval between gold and silver, silver and bronze, the 4th and 5th position and between the 8th and 9th position in the top division. The reason for the larger intervals for these positions is to give teams a bonus for reaching the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the final and for winning the gold medal.

That means although the 5th place team earns 1060 points, the 4th place team receives 1100 points, instead of 1080, for advancing to the semi-finals.

Are results from every year included?

To enable the ranking to accurately reflect current form, the greatest importance is given to results of the last year's competition. To a lesser degree, attention is also paid to results from previous years. The system uses a four-year cycle as the points earned in one year decline linearly within the next 3 years and in the 5th year results are dropped from the calculation altogether.

So, a gold medal won in 2007 would have been worth the full value of 1200 points in the 2007 IIHF World Ranking. Its point value would have diminished to 900 points for the 2008 IIHF World Ranking. Last year, it was worth 600 points, and this year, the gold medal from 2007 is only worth 300 points, the equivalent to what the runner up in Division III this year would have got. By the time the 2011 IIHF World Ranking is released next year, the gold medal from four years will have no impact.

When is the IIHF World Ranking released?

The IIHF World Ranking will be released following each IIHF World Championship and the Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament.

That means the 2010 IIHF World Ranking will be officially released shortly after the conclusion of the gold medal match. On February 28, after the 2010 Olympic Winter Games concluded, the IIHF released this year's rankings that reflected the standings of the Olympics. The IIHF seems to be pretty quick with releasing this, as it is just simple addition.

Before each World Championship, a pre-championship report will be released, in which the values of the previous seasons are already reduced according to the above-described procedure and where only the points of the upcoming competition need to be added to get the IIHF World Ranking for the year.

Join me here after the semi-finals as I post Part II of this series!

Team Finland celebrates with the bronze medal after a victory over Slovakia in
men's ice hockey at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. via www.chinapost.com.tw

For the team who makes it all the way to the championship final but loses, it is truly a heartbreaking moment for not only the 25 players on the team, but often times an entire nation as well. While a silver medal means you finished second, a third-place finish, or a bronze medal, is arguably more prized. One reason is that because you finished out the tournament victorious, not exactly so true to those who got the consolation prize after missing out for first in the gold medal game.

I'll end this short post off by asking you the question - would you prefer to lose in the gold medal game for a silver or win in the bronze medal game for a bronze?