It appears that Best Buy busted the on sale date embargo in the US. A number of their stores are already selling the D7000 kits they've received, so a few customers in the US have started getting the camera in their hands. Officially, NikonUSA started shipping cameras from the main warehouse to dealers today, which means that they should show up in most camera stores for sale on Monday or Tuesday. The official US on sale date is October 18th (Monday), so those Best Buy stores are jumping the gun.
While I believe everyone is going to sell out of their initial shipment so they won't be too upset by the early sales, I'm sure NikonUSA is still going to get flack over this from the dealers. This is a pattern that has repeated several times now. It happens because Best Buy has to sub-distribute to its stores (items go from NikonUSA to Best Buy warehouses to individual stores), and in order to give them the same chance at the on sale date, that means that NikonUSA has to distribute to the Best Buy warehouses prior to shipping to camera dealers. Coupled with some occurances of big box stores offering things like Instant Rebates a few days earlier than dealers could, it feels like NikonUSA and the big box stores are on the precipice of violating FTC fair trade policies.