Good teams win games even when they don’t necessarily play well, and that’s what the Thrashers have been doing lately. They didn’t put together a full 60 minute effort on Friday night in Raleigh but they won 6-4 in dramatic fashion. They played better Saturday night at home against the Flyers, but not many of their meager 18 shots were grade A scoring chances and they can thank Johan Hedberg and the PK team for the 1-0 win.
Say what you will about the shot differentials and the slow starts, but the Thrashers are finding ways to win and have now gone 7-1-2 since Ilya Kovalchuk returned. Imagine how dominant they can be if they fix some of their shortcomings and get a few more players contributing regularly on the offensive end. The fact that they’re winning this many games without playing their best hockey is very, very encouraging. I would be concerned if they looked like they were playing over their heads right now, but they’re far from. They’re actually playing below their potential and are still winning games regularly. How many teams can say that right now?
Some more good news from last night- according to TSN the NHL is not looking at any form of supplementary discipline for Colby Armstrong’s hit on Jame van Riemsdyk that earned him a charging penalty and a game misconduct.
The whole sequence is on YouTube (feel free to ignore what the Philly broadcasters had to say seeing as armstrong has been anything but a dirty hitter since coming to Atlanta) and you can see that it all started off with van Riemsdyk delivering three straight shots to Armstrong’s back at the faceoff. As John Anderson said after the game, the play should have ended right there with a penalty to van Riemsdyk. It didn’t, and Armstrong took matters into his own hands. You can quibble over whether or not Armstrong deserved the 15 minutes in penalties, but I thnk you’d have a hard time making a case for a fine or suspension. A rookie took some liberties at a period-opening faceoff and paid a price for it. Armstrong in turn paid a penalty for his actions (both in penalties and the abuse he took from Asham). The players took care of it, as they should be able to.
In other news, I’ll be putting up a press release shortly officially announcing that Boris Valabik has been recalled from his conditioning assignment in Chicago. It’ll be interesting to see if he gets into the lineup tomorrow night versus the Panthers. I’m going to say he doesn’t and that they give him a few days of practice before putting him in versus the Islanders on Thursday. Raise your hand if you’d like to see Valabik versus Sutton. The Thrashers will carry eight defensemen for the time being and see how it plays out before figuring out what to do. I’ll be surprised if al eight go on the upcoming four-game road trip.
I did think that Armstrong should have gotten a 2 min. minor for charging but the ejection was uneccesary. Both JVR and Asham were looking for trouble at the faceoff circle before the puck ever dropped and Armstrong just did what most other players would. I think that since Bogosian was behind JVR, Bogo and Army kind of sanwiched him which made it look much worse than it was. Besides, JVR was fine and didnt miss a single shift. Good work by the PK and Moose to kill off the three minute penalty.
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The Philly announcers were so annoying in the call of the hit and it was so frustrating having to listen to that. I thought the officiating all night was rather questionable on both sides and was not happy with that, but in the end, the boys won and got Hedberg the shutout. 2 more points in the standings.
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Payback on Armstrong is going to be awesome. Can’t wait to hear you guys crying fowl.
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I feel like i can look at things somewhat subjectively and i have to say that i am in complete agreement with Coach Anderson. JVR took three shots with a cross check and there was no call. Colby’s hit wasn’t even that bad. JVR was not paying attention at all. How is this hit any more dirty than the one Colby threw in montreal?
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Would love to see Valabik play the Panthers…..Size does matter
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I think the ref’s blew the call and are sensitive to the league looking at head shots. The announcers for the game even mentioned this. There was nothing wrong with the hit, I feel it was not 100% clean, but it wasn’t dirty either. Colby did not fight back when Asham jumped him and kept his head down. In my opinion the penalties should have offset and no one deserved a misconduct of any kind. As for Asham; he was only defending his team mate, we would expect the same from our guys.
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No one is talking about the fact that “Mullet head Hartnell” ran our goalie, my beloved Moose?
Yes, Moose was out of the crease, but since when do you get to run the goalie and not get your teeth kicked in? Maybe I missed something sitting four rows directly behind our goal??
Hartnell added insult to injury when he said something to the Moose as he skated away, and then he baited our players from the bench. He should have been beaten to a pulp.
I’m thinking back to our 2003/2004 playoff fiasco and it’s like having dejavu all over again. The Moose is carrying this team on his back because we STILL don’t have a true number one goalie. That’s been the story for as long as I can remember. Pavs may be the real deal, but it’s way too soon to tell because he is so young. As I mentioned on a recent post, our history is strewn with young goalies with a lot of potential. But they were beaten down physically and emotionally with a barrage of pucks night after night.
For those of you with poor memories, here’s a recap for you, in alphabetical order.
Adam Berkhoel
Frédéric Cassivi
Byron Dafoe
Mike Dunham
Scott Fankhouser
Michael Garnett
Milan Hnilicka
Scott Langkow
Kari Lehtonen
Norm Maracle
Pasi Nurminen
Damian Rhodes
Steve Shields
Rick Tabaracci
And if you are the Moose, aren’t you thinking . . . “who do I have to **** to get the starting job around here?” It’s not like he’s 40 years old and riding off into the sunset anytime soon.
Since I”m having a few senior moments, here’s another thought. Don’t you LOVE that new Apple commerical where the IBM guy says “here’s new Windows 7, it’s better than Vista, trust me” Then they flash back a couple of years and the same guy is saying “here’s new Windows Vista, it’s better than XP, trust me”. And it goes on like this for a while.
Sound familiar?? That’s how I feel about our GM and the ownership. About the only “good” thing about being such a horrible team is that you get to load up on draft choices.
I HOPE this team is the real deal, but until we get our goaltending straightened out, and STOP giving up 40 shots a night, I will not allow my heart to be broken again.
To the best of my knowlege, we’ve drafted 81 players in our history so far, and playing on the team right now are Slater, Little, Pavelec, Vlabic, Kovy, Entstrom and Lehtonin. I don’t pretend to know how this compares to the rest of the league, but I don’t think it’s very good.
Would appreciate some objective feedback. I’m tired of all this “oh, we are so good, THIS is the year . . . ”
P.S. Afinegenov is the needle in the haystack!!
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Cuzinator – here are a few other recent needles in that haystack…Kubina…Peverly…Antropov…Coach Anderson…drafting Bogosian and Kane. When things are turning in the right direction why do some people insist on looking backward instead of forward.
As for the guys in goal, pay attention to the comments from the players this year. They are consistently singing the praises of Pavs and of course they all respect Moose for his work ethic and how he has performed this year. Our losses for the most part haven’t been due to poor goaltending. I’d say they have more to do with lackluster skating in front of the goalies for one or two periods in some games. And I wholeheartedly agree that we give up way too many shots, especially compared to how many we take. But with Kovy on the ice so much you know our defense suffers…he’s not exactly known as a stellar two-way player. At times it’s kind of like being on the PK when he’s on the ice 5 on 5. I love him and hope we sign him long-term, but unless he decides to expend more effort on D we will always give up alot of shots.
Nonetheless, I’m more of a Cup half full guy as opposed to half empty. I like what I have seen so far this year, expect us to make the playoffs, and sincerely hope we make a run in the playoffs.
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I have to agree with CUZ; I have high hopes, but am also waiting for the other shoe to drop so to speak.
Its true we have a ton of talent and I believe there will be at least 6 guys with 20+ goals this season;
Kovy, Pevs, Kane, Bogs, Antro, Max
Of these six I believe three will score at least 30;
Max, Kovy perhaps 50-60, Pevs
Others who perhaps may reach ten goals;
Kozzie, Enstrom, Kubina, Thornburn
However, no matter how much we score, lets be face some real truths and take a real objective look at this like CUZ has asked.
The simple truth is we cannot, should not, MUST NOT play to win every game 6-4 or 7-5. This is a real receipe for disaster. The Anderson system certainly is offensive minded, but we should really clamp down on the SOG our guys are facing every night.
The example I will use again is the New Jersey Devils. I am certainly not advocating the BORING neutral zone trap, but I am suggesting that we do stand up guys on the blueline and defend our zone with a little more aggression. The 34 shots faced vs. Philly was an improvement, but it really needs to be more in the neighborhood of 25-28. I do not know what the exact average # of shots that Brodeur has faced over his career, but as far as I know it was around 27. Last I also checked he had 3 Stanley Cups to his credit as well.
To summarize I believe we can and should be a playoff team this year, but that dream will implode if our goaltenders play one degree less than what they have been and do not get some relief on the shots. How deep can we go again depends on how well we can adjust defensively.
One thing to point out;
Last year Boston had two very good goaltenders in Thomas and Fernandez. They played exceptionally well. The Pavelec / Hedberg platoon gives me the same impression although I believe Pavs is now considered to be the # 1 guy.
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Hand raised (for valabik v. Sutton)
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Thought Army’s hit was clean….. not a head shot…. wanna call a charge??? eh, Ok.
SOG? Seems to me almost EVERY nite on the league recap that just about EVERYBODY! is giving up 30,35 40 a nite. Might it be the ‘new NHL’?
Wasn’t that the idea to open it up? Did away w/ the Red line. Same thing EH?
Also, if you’ll notice, our boys on some nites are giving up the body, and blocking more shots….. as well as very good stickwork, ramping shots. Against Philly we did an excellent job of clearing rebounds too! Battled hard!!!
Me?? I’m more concerned w/ our SOG….. one pass too many sometimes resulting in ZILCHO!
Also noticed with all our skilled forwards that sometimes they try and ‘snipe’ it, as opposed to just putting it on net. End result being lower SOG Ttls.
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Yeah, we do have a lot of missed shots. I’m sure if someone was counting those, they’d notice that ATL is ranked pretty high up on misses/game. But I’m alright with the boys trying to roof the puck, or get it just into the corner. I will however, agree on the “one pass too many” comment. Sometimes the guys are just way too unselfish. They need to learn exactly when to go for an assist, and when to say “nope, this one’s mine”. Otherwise, still have high hopes for this season. We might play slow sometimes, but we’re finding ways to win games without playing all out, so that’s a good sign.
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Perhaps our missed shots and our high shot percentage have a bit of a relationship. While many of shots taken are missed, they are more likely to find twine when on target. Just food for thought.
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BEN,
You must admit, Armstrong does deliver a dirty hit from time to time. He always has, starting early in his career in Pittsburg.
I don’t think the hit was suspention-worthy, but it was DIRTY.
Ben, stop being a homer. It was a dirty hit.
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I didn’t see the play live at the game well as people were standing up in front me moving to their seats, but after seeing that YouTube video I don’t see how that warrants a major and/or game misconduct. A 2 min charging penalty…sure, but nothing more than the fighting major with Asham. It looked like a clean hit in the chest. He didn’t come in from behind. He didn’t plaster him into the boards. There shouldn’t be any kind of fine or suspension. Heck there shouldn’t have even been any kind of ejection. I agree with Anderson, where was the cross checking penalties before the faceoff?
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Mike- Like I said, I didn’t have a problem with the penalties that were handed out. Some games that’s a charge, others it’s not penalized. I don’t think I called it a clean hit at any point.
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Cuzinator
I forgot all about Garnett until I saw your post. He was a beast that season when we had all the injuries. I honestly thought he could be a contender for the number one spot if given a few years to mature. Do you know what happened to him? A friend told me he was playing in Europe, but I’m not sure if thats true or not.
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Great posts!
I was watching the replay of the Panthers game yesterday on the Panthers network (I’m in Florida right now) and they were talking about the fact that Kovy’s line is great offensively and bad defensively. Mentioned how we give up the most shots in the NHL.
Listening to the opponents broadcasters after Afinigenov stuck the knife in their heart with 5 seconds left in the game–PRICELESS!
Don’t want the boring Devils style, but would love to see some of their defensive discipline. We lead the league in scoring and our goalies are playing great, but too many shots = too may scoring chances by our opponents.
Let’s be honest. The Moose is playing out of his mind right now. I love him and want him to be the number one goalie, but don’t see that happening because we need to groom Pavs.
I’m going to try and tone down the sarcasm and hope for the best. This may not last, but it sure is fun.
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