When last Brent Peterson was in the news, the former Nashville Predators' assistant coach had just come out of deep brain stimulation surgery to help him with his Parkinson's disease which is now 10 years on since diagnosis.

All was well and good and he was literally jumping around after the procedure when before he was creeping around like a very old man and looking like he would soon be in the place where all Parkinson's sufferers eventually end. Everyone in hockey was thrilled and excited and raving about what an amazing transformation had taken place.

But how is he doing a couple of months on? Have the effects of the surgery continued and is he still able to live something of a normal life, something which in itself would be miraculous given how the disease usually progresses.

Happily, everything is still pretty good and Peterson's only complaint when contacted just before his Friday induction into the Portland Winterhawks hall of fame was that his right hand was working so well that it was causing him a hook on the golf course. And as always throughout the entire ordeal, the former Canuck centre was in wonderful spirits even though the procedure has not done so much that he might one day be able to fulfill his ultimate dream of returning to the ice and not only coaching, but becoming a head coach in the NHL.

“The one thing the surgery hasn't done and can't do is anything for your balance so I can't go back on the ice,” says the 54-year-old Peterson, who was such a thinker when he played the game you knew his ultimate calling was as a coach. “But other than that, everything is great. I'm down to using only four pills per day and that's on a bad one when before I was up to 16 to try to control the tremors. It's been absolutely a life saver for me. I can't say how happy I am and how grateful I am for the help I've been given.”

While Peterson can't go on the ice, don't get the idea he's not working still. As an adviser to Preds coach Barry Trotz, Peterson is right on top of things and is still very much part of the amazing success this team keeps rolling out despite the fact they don't have any high end goal scoring. It's just that the deterioration of the disease before the surgery forced the team to have to change his role.

“I'm now an adviser and the best thing about it is that you don't get any of the blame if things go wrong,” says Peterson laughing about his good fortune for a change. “If they take your advice you're a genius and if they don't that's their lookout so I'm having a great time and I'm still very much part of the games. I sit upstairs and Barry will ask me for my opinion and thoughts during and after the games.”

As one of the most optimistic people on the planet, Peterson is convinced the Preds will be able to re-sign both Ryan Suter and Shea Weber to long term contracts and that within a year the team will be among the top spenders in the league.

“We're doing things we've never done before,” he says. “We had a game early in the week against Calgary recently and sold it out and that never happened before. We're basically sold out for the rest of the year and guys really want to play here. I think the Suter and Weber situation will take care of itself. These guys want to stay in Nashville but they also want to win and that's exactly as it should be. I think they've already convinced them to stay and in my opinion we'll be spending to the cap within a year. We have to. We've got to make a decision, we're either going to do this or we're not. We'll never have another situation like this where we've got maybe the best goalie in the game in Pekka (Rinne) and two of the three best defencemen in the game the way we have now. If we're not going to be able to keep these guys, what are we doing? That's the way everyone in the organization feels.

“But this team, we're better than people think. We've got a winning record when Suter has been out, we've got a winning record when Weber has missed games although fortunately neither has missed too many. And that's been the case because Rinne has been so good and guys like (Ryan) Ellis and (Kevin) Klein are really good themselves. We've got a lot of good players up front too. Guys like (David) Legwand, (Mike) Fisher and (Martin) Erat are really good players, just not great. And Rinne. I think he's the best in the league. He held us in early in the year. We could have been a team like Columbus where you get that slow start and you never recover had it not been for him. We're going to stay on Detroit all year and give them a real good push.”

Yes, all is well with Brent Peterson.