Give Custance Credit

The folks over at NHL Fanhouse are doing their year-end reviews, and for the category of MSM writer of the year, a little surprise showed up:

Greg Wyshynski: Craig Custance, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Outstanding coverage in a non-traditional market, and a genuine acceptance and curiosity about the alternative hockey media.

It is nice to see him get credit for what he does. We as fans often express anger at the media coverage in Atlanta, including the AJC, TV, and radio, but Custance is the exception. He does his job well, and it is gaining notice.

Vote for Kovy

January 2nd marks the last day to vote for the starters in the all-star game. Kovalchuk is still outside of a starting spot, and there are only a few days left to vote. So while you are sitting around watching football or the Winter Classic, vote for Kovy.

How is this guy not in the starting lineup?

Postgame, vs. Panthers, 20 Minutes of Hockey

For the first time since November of 2003, the Thrashers lost to the Florida Panthers at home. If you had told me that Kovy would score two goals, and that we would have 41 shots, I would have immediately bet all my money in my pocket at the time on the Thrashers.

Fortunately, I didn’t do that, as the Thrashers lost for the first time all season when they outshot an opponent.

The Christmas hangover lasted through the game in Columbus, and through the first two periods of tonight’s game. In the first minute of the third, Kovy ended the drought and put in his 31st of the year, followed later in the period with a shorthanded goal for his 32nd.

Why did we lose? Two reasons: absolutely no effort or production in the first two periods, and a off night from Kari.

Lehtonen, in all fairness, did not play horribly. He played well enough to keep the Thrashers in the game. But his timing was off, and he looked lost on the shots that did go in. He had a lot of bad breaks, and the goals he allowed were tipped. From Don Waddell:

“The first two goals were really fluky,” Waddell said. “The first one hit the referee and the guy banged it home, and the second one barely went over the line. … I thought we were playing pretty well and all of a sudden we’re down 2-0.”

Let’s talk about two of the best players in the league: Ilya Kovalchuk and Tobias Enstrom. Kovy is far and away the best goal scorer in the league, if not the world. What is scary is that he is branching out, and not just scoring on the long range slapshots like in the past. Tonight he scored off a rebound, and on a shorthanded situation. Don’t look now, but 19 goals in 12 games gets him the incredibly rare 50 goals in 50 games.

And he’s not in the starting lineup for the all-star game!! Get voting, folks!

Tobias Enstrom. What can we say about this kid? It wasn’t too long ago that we were questioning if he would even make the team out of camp. A few short months later, he is leading the Calder race, leading the Thrashers in time on ice, and is one of the best defensemen the Thrashers have ever had, if not the best. Did he leave the ice in the third period? I sure didn’t see him sit.

I had one issue with Waddell tonight. I usually won’t argue with coaching decisions, other than discussing line combinations. With exactly one minute left in the game, there was a faceoff at center ice. I was under the impression that for any faceoff other than an offensive zone faceoff, a team would put the goalie back in net in case of a clean, quick faceoff win for the opponent. Well, what happens, but the Panthers win the faceoff, and Jay Bouwmeester fires a shot that goes in 4 seconds later.

The bottom line is that the Thrashers missed a huge opportunity tonight. It was one of those four-point games that make a huge difference in the standings. Blueland was rocking, and was as loud as it has been in a while. The boys showed up 40 minutes late, played well for the last 20, but just couldn’t finish the job. The Thrashers play every other day for the next two weeks, with most at home, so there is a great opportunity to move up into playoff positioning.

Look for Moose to be in net on Saturday, as Kari could use a game off and a chance to get his timing back.

Congrats are due to Slava Kozlov, who was recognized before the game for playing in his 1000th career game yesterday in Columbus.

Stats of the Day

Here are two pretty interesting figures that tell a lot about the Thrashers season so far:

• The Thrashers are 9-2 in games decided by 1 goal.
• When leading after the first period, the Thrashers are 7-0. When leading after the second, the team is 10-1.

The close games can partly be attributed to the great overtime record (and is the cause of a lot of heart problems in Blueland.

The other stat says a lot about the team. Basically, if they have a lead, the Thrashers do a great job locking it down. The problem comes from actually getting that lead.

A Look at Puck Possession

When is the only time when a team can score a goal? When they have the puck. How do you get the puck? With good defense and takeaways. What helps the other team score? Giveaways. Pretty simple, right?

Well, let’s take a look at which Thrashers players help the puck possession battle the most by taking the puck more than giving it up.

To find which players are doing the best in this area, I subtracted giveaways from takeaways and then averaged that per 60 minutes a player plays. First, let’s look at the forwards with a positive rating.

Player	TkA	GvA	TkA / 60	GvA / 60	Rating
Bobby Holik	34	9	3.92	1.04	2.89
Todd White	38	12	3.43	1.08	2.35
Eric Boulton	11	3	2.91	0.79	2.12
Chris Thorburn	8	1	2.40	0.30	2.10
Pascal Dupuis	19	6	2.43	0.77	1.66
Bryan Little	15	9	2.03	1.22	0.81
Marian Hossa	28	19	2.42	1.65	0.78
Brad Larsen	8	5	1.91	1.19	0.71
Eric Perrin	19	14	1.98	1.46	0.52
Brett Sterling	3	2	1.45	0.97	0.48
Jim Slater	7	5	1.39	0.99	0.40
Darren Haydar	6	6	1.91	1.91	0.00

This is all but three of the forwards. It is about what I expected, with a few exceptions. Look at those top two players. Todd White and Bobby Holik? Definitely didn’t see that coming. That is very impressive for two players that have taken a lot of flack this year. Holik makes some sense because he is on the defensive checking line and doesn’t push the action. White on the other hand is on a scoring line, which makes his numbers look even better.

Now to the forwards in negative territory:

Player	TkA	GvA	TkA / 60	GvA / 60	Rating
Vyacheslav Kozlov	18	19	1.85	1.96	-0.10
Ilya Kovalchuk	26	35	2.04	2.75	-0.71
Mark Recchi	6	12	0.90	1.79	-0.90

I am going to throw Recchi out of this discussion and not put much weight on it, becuse of a small sample size, and because he is still learning to play with the other players. Kovy isn’t much of a surprise here, because of his penchant to carry the puck in by himself. He has made many great plays by himself, especially this year, but he still needs to work on the turnovers given up.

Now for the defensemen.

Player	TkA	GvA	TkA / 60	GvA / 60	Rating
Mark Popovic	5	4	1.28	1.02	0.26
Ken Klee	12	12	1.10	1.10	0.00
Alexei Zhitnik	14	15	1.38	1.48	-0.10
Steve McCarthy	4	6	0.77	1.16	-0.39
Garnet Exelby	15	20	1.41	1.88	-0.47
Tobias Enstrom	16	25	1.19	1.86	-0.67
Niclas Havelid	10	19	0.86	1.63	-0.77

It is interesting to see that just about all of the forwards are positive, and most of the defenders are negative. That might be a theme that holds true for all teams, or it might be because the Thrashers defense isn’t, well, to put it nicely, the best in the league.

The numbers for the blueliners don’t tell us much because it is represents how much each player moves the puck. The bottom two, Enstrom and Havelid, are the puck movers and tend to force the action. On the other side of the spectrum, Klee and Zhitnik are more “stay at home” defensemen.

It is also interesting to note that the defensive pairings Waddell switched to this past week are all right next to each other.

Coming later this week I will take a look at which Thrasher player make those around them better.

Postgame, vs. Senators: Maturity

All season, the Thrashers have played with absolutely no consistency. Flashes of brilliance would immediately be followed by “what-in-the-*&#(@” moments. Players, coaches, TV commentators, fans, and even the beer vendors wondered just what it might look like if the team could play 60 minutes of hockey that lived up to the team’s potential.

We saw it Tuesday night against Tampa Bay. It was a great win coming off of a bad losing streak. Truthfully, it was a full 60 minute effort. But questions were raised. Was it because Tampa Bay is one of the worst road teams in the league? Was it because they too have been playing badly of late?

Last night, the Thrashers played their second straight 60 minute effort, against the best team in the Eastern Conference. They tied a franchise record with 45 shots, and held the Senators to 30. Martin Gerber played one of the better games a goaltender has played against the Thrashers, and still lost. The following players can all say that they played their best games all season: Slater (he needs to fight every night), Thorburn, Lehtonen, and Holik. And it came against the best team in the East!

Let’s put this into perspective. The Senators had won their previous six games coming into Atlanta, having outscored their opponents 29-12 in that time span. In the three pervious games against the Thrashers, the Sens had won all three and scored 16 goals in those three games.

Sound like a game that the Thrashers would tie a franchise record in shots? Nope.

This was playoff hockey: opportunistic offense, tight defense, physical play, outstanding goaltending, and electric atmosphere. And the Thrashers played to their talent level, and won.

Kari played like the goaltender that we all know he is. He was smart, controlled the rebounds, and showed confidence again. Last year when he was playing well he would make a glove save, and add some flourish on the end of it. He was doing the same tonight. He only faced 30 shots, most of which came late in the third, but he dominated the game.

After most games you can usually think of a few players that did not play well. Try and name one tonight. It’s impossible. Every single player that stepped foot on the ice played well. The entire team was physical, but not stupid; fast, but not out of position; and emotional, but not negatively.

It was a mature win. Every player did their role with passion, and perfection. Have you ever seen Ilya Kovalchuk score on a backhand, let alone a backhand while diving for a rebound? Didn’t think so. The players showed up to play, and wanted the game badly. Now all they have to do is do the same thing every night.

I think the night can be summed up best by something Darren Eliot said after the game. The players withstood a 6 on 4 for the final minute, played their best game all season, and beat the best team in the conference in front a loud home crowd. Did the players celebrate? Nope. They did the normal high fives on the ice, but that was it. It was a mature celebration, and it spoke volumes about the fact that they know there is still a long uphill battle back to the playoffs.

If they continue to play like tonight, it will be a fun ride.

Winter Classic Ad

Great ad in my opinion.

Kovalchuk on Historic Pace

From the Toronto Sun:

In the greatest goal scoring season of his career, Wayne Gretzky scored 92 times, representing 22% of the Edmonton Oilers goal output in 1981-82. When Maurice (Rocket) Richard became the first 50-goal scorer in hockey history, he scored 21.9% of Montreal’s goals in 1944-45. When Mike Bossy scored 69 goals in 1978-79, he scored just 19.2% of New York Islanders goals.

To date, heading into last night’s game with the Maple Leafs, Kovalchuk is shattering all of that — scoring 30% of the Thrashers goals. No one in history has done that before.

Gameday Update

We apologize for no activity over the past few days. We at Talking Thrash were recovering from exam week and took three days off.

In line news, Kovalchuk and Hossa have been split up for the first time in a while. Tonight’s line combinations, from the Blueland Blog:

Kovalchuk- White- Recchi
Hossa- Perrin- Kozlov
Larsen- Holik- Dupuis
Boulton- Slater- Thorburn

Havelid- Enstrom
Klee- Zhitnik
Exelby- McCarthy

Is it possible for Havelid and Enstrom to play the entire game? Please? The other two defensive pairings do not inspire much confidence in me, espcially the Exelby and “The-Player-Now-Known-As-Minus-19″ line.

Should be a good game between two struggling Southeastern teams.

The Thrashers play 3 home game in 5 days, and 4 total games in 6. Needless to say they are very critical. We could have the worst record in the league by Christmas, or be near playoff position again.

Also of note, the Christmas transaction freeze starts tomorrow. Don’t expect any moves before then, but if the team does not play well in the next week, there definitely will be movement after the freeze ends.

Dance, Miss, Miss, Knockout

From the YouTube description:

In Game 7 of the Central Hockey League Semi-Finals, Fraser Filipic of the Colorado Eagles and Grahm Dearle of the Oklahoma City Blazers squared up at center ice.

Dearle was all right and came back later in the game. But wow, that was a wicked left hook.