Tuesday’s News and Notes

Besides Little’s demotion, there are a few other bits of news to report:

• Darren Haydar has been put on waivers. If he clears, there will be two weeks to send him to Chicago.
• Johan Hedberg is in net tomorrow night against Boston.
• Ilya Kovalchuk has passed Alex Ovechkin in all-star voting, and is now in 5th place.
• James Mirtle has a great article about Craig Custance and the job he is doing as beat writer.
• And finally, the rumor mills are in high gear today with discussions about possible Anaheim trades.

Behind the Scenes and Blue Hair

The Blueland Blog put up a link to a great behind the scenes video of the Thrashers – Maple Leafs game from March 29. Great video, and it should help get you pumped for tomorrow’s game.

Also, it looks like a few Thrashers have more hair changes than just growing a beard:

The big news at practice today? Kari Lehtonen and Andy Sutton’s new hair. Forget the playoff beard, Sutton and Lehtonen decided to go with bright blue hair. So I guess this officially marks the start of the playoffs. Sutton went with the all-blue look while Lehtonen opted to dye part of it bleach white then the middle blue. If I was smart I would have grabbed some pictures with my camera phone – but I’m not. I think it’s time I start carrying a digital camera around for the blog.

Lehtonen said he wasn’t happy with the dye-job and will probably redo it for Thursday’s game. He didn’t like the transition turquoise color between the white and the blue. So here’s today’s scoop for you — look for Lehtonen to go all-blue for Thursday.

Oh man, I cannot wait to see that tomorrow.

AJC Coverage

Well, it looks like the AJC is raising the amount of Thrashers coverage for the playoffs. It’s about damn time. Articles in tomorrow’s paper:

Scouting the New York Rangers
Playoffs are right time for Lehtonen

It happens every year. Last year Cam Ward and Dwayne Roloson emerged to lead Carolina and Edmonton to the Stanley Cup finals. Other years, a guy like Jean-Sebastien Giguere or Nikolai Khabibulin got hot at just the right time.

27 years later, it’s a rematch in playoffs

The last time the city sampled the NHL playoffs — indeed, the last major-league hockey game of any kind here for nearly 20 years — was on April 12, 1980, inside the Omni. The old Atlanta Flames lost 5-2 that day to the timeless New York Rangers, and were ejected from the first round of the playoffs. The Flames soon thereafter fled to Calgary, leaving a few Southern hockey fans and Zamboni drivers to starve.

Big-time playoff hockey returns. On Thursday, which happens to fall on April 12. The Thrashers’ opponent: the New York Rangers.

The Stanley Cup playoffs — Eh to Z

A is for “Eh,” a Canadian phrase that stands for a period, comma, question mark, exclamation point and, in some remote parts of the Northwest Territories, a semicolon.

The Ice Man is reminiscing about his memories from the 8 years of Thrashers history.

I remember driving up to Duluth for one of the first practices. Everybody had different gear bags from their old teams; I remember a Red Wings frame around the license plate on Norm Maracle’s car. I asked Curt Fraser about it, and he said, “Yeah we’re gonna have a big bonfire tonight. All that stuff’s gotta go.”

Simmer Back

From Craig Custance:

Injured Atlanta Thrashers forward Jon Sim returned to practice Tuesday morning after having being cleared by team doctors to return to the lineup.

Sim, out since March 22 after his orbital bone was broken during a fight, won’t play on Wednesday at home against Washington but hopes to return by the weekend.

“Today was like playing a game, I was excited to get out with the guys,” Sim said. “Especially this time of year.”

Sim will wear a full cage to protect his orbital bone, one strengthened by a metal plate and screws inserted during surgery.

Coach Bob Hartley said he wasn’t sure when he’d get Sim back in the lineup, only confirming that doctors had cleared him to play.

Sim’s Recovery

From Craig Custance:

Thrashers forward Jon Sim, who broke his orbital bone last Thursday during a fight with San Jose’s Mark Bell and had surgery Saturday to put a plate and screws in his head, was back at the team’s practice facility Monday, antsy to get back at it. He begged to be allowed to join the team in Florida.

He called Philadelphia’s Mike Knuble, who suffered a similar injury after a collision with New York’s Brendan Shanahan earlier this year, and the news wasn’t good. It took nearly a month for Knuble to return.

Meanwhile, his spirits are up, and for those who know Sim well, it’s no surprise. Neither is the fact he took on a much bigger opponent.

Sim is 5-foot-10. Bell is 6-4.

“I couldn’t find any smaller guys out there; they’re all 6-4,” Sim said, laughing.

“I said, ‘Bellsy, you wanna fight?’ ” Sim recalled. “He said, ‘Are you serious?’ I was like, ‘I have to do something.’ “

Hartley said he appreciated the effort from Sim, as did his teammates, but felt like the linesman could have prevented the injury with better judgment.

“I thought the linesman could and should have stopped it earlier,” Hartley said.

Stanley Cup Confidence

From the AJC:

De Vries won it in Colorado under Bob Hartley in 2001 and sees more in common with that team than just the head coach.

“[In Colorado] we had a quiet confidence,” de Vries said. “But I see that here, especially since the trade deadline, since we acquired [Zhitnik], Tkachuk, Dupuis and Belanger. You can see it, we think we can win every night and that’s a huge quality.”

Kozlov, who won two Stanley Cups (1997-98) with Detroit, agreed.

“I think it’s there,” said Kozlov when talking about the team’s confidence. “Especially after the trades, we have so much confidence. We’re playing much better right now. The four lines are clicking together.”

But that’s where the similarities end.

Across the board, there was a major difference. Every Thrashers player who won a Stanley Cup can thank a goaltender with at least some playoff experience. Most won with veteran goalies.

Tuesday’s News and Articles

Here are a few articles of interest (to me at least) from today. There are five, and all are worth a read.

First off, Craig Custance has started a discussion about possible first round opponents. Check it out and voice your opinion.

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Pierre LeBrun took a look at a decline in scoring this season from last.

The new NHL is suffering a sophomore scoring mini-slump.

A year after sporting five 50-goal scorers, the most in a decade, only one player is currently on pace to top the magical barrier.

Scoring is down across the board. The NHL was averaging 5.8 goals per game this season through Monday night’s games, down from 6.1 through the same number of games last year, but still up from the 5.1 goals per game the league average through the same number of games in 2003-04 before the lockout.

James Mirtle finds out why scoring is down:

On average, teams are on pace to score 4.0 more even-strength goals in total than last season, but 13.7 fewer power-play goals and 1.1 fewer shorthanded goals.

Overall, that equals out to a 10.1 goal decrease per team, or a little more than a 4-per-cent drop in scoring. Even-strength scoring is on pace to rise by 2.7-per-cent while power-play goal production is down a whopping 16.3 per cent.

Here’s LeBrun again:

“Another theory is that players have adjusted to the new rules. They’re certainly taking less penalties. Through Monday night the NHL was averaging 9.8 power plays per game, down from 11.8 through the same number of games last season.”

Fewer penalties called, fewer power-play goals. We’ve found our culprit.

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A USAToday piece by Kevin Allen about the Thrashers, the playoffs, and the deadline deals:

Atlanta Thrashers general manager Don Waddell understands the difference between managerial panic and managerial aggressiveness often comes down to which chair you are occupying.

“I’ve read (some critical) comments that were made after the deals we made,” Waddell says. “And granted we haven’t won a thing, but all I can say is at the deadline we were two points up for a playoff spot and now we are 10.”

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The Forechecker reminds everyone that sportsmanship can still be shown amidst all of the fighting in hockey:

We’re approaching the 10th anniversary of perhaps the most intense and spectacular regular-season games in NHL history, the March 26, 1997 brawl-fest between the Colorado Avalanche and Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena (more on that next week). Lost amidst the the furor of Darren McCarty vs. Claude Lemieux (among other battles) was an underreported gesture by Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy at the end of the game. McCarty scored the game winner in overtime, and as his teammates celebrated and headed off the ice, Roy fired the puck down to Red Wings goalie Mike Vernon, with whom Roy had fought just two periods earlier. This was in recognition of the fact that the game marked Vernon’s 300th career victory, a hallmark achievement in a goaltender’s NHL career.

Was Roy angry and disappointed at losing the game? Absolutely. But he knew that Vernon had reached a noteworthy milestone, and Roy made sure that Vernon got the game puck to mark the occasion. It was the professional thing to do, and Roy didn’t let the emotions of the moment get in the way.

Pathetic in Philly

The second period just ended up in Philly. I was able to watch the first period, but for whatever reason my feed for SportSouth isn’t working and I had to listen to the second period with the crappy internet feed. We are down by a goal against the worst team in the league without their best player. That is pretty bad

In other news, from Craig Custance reports that The Mullet (hint: Barry Melrose) likes the new Thrashers.

[Melrose] also likes the Thrashers, and loved the Zhitnik trade especially. He said he really likes the makeup of the Thrashers, good mix of leadership and skill. His biggest concern is goaltending, because, in his words – Kari Lehtonen hasn’t made a playoff save yet. What’s your level of concern about Lehtonen’s playoff inexperience?

Now let’s just hope the guys come out and play well for the final period so that we don’t go 0 for 4 on the season against the league’s worst team.

Favorable Schedule

From Craig Custance:

The Thrashers’ favorable season-ending schedule means different things to different people. For a goalie, like Kari Lehtonen, the fact that there are only three back-to-back games left this season, is huge.

“You can rest the old guys,” Mellanby suggested, still soaked in sweat from Wednesday’s practice.

There is no road trip longer than one game the rest of the season. Six of the Thrashers’ final 11 games are at Philips Arena. And of those 11 games, entering Wednesday’s games, only five opponents are currently in a playoff spot.

“The schedule doesn’t mean anything unless we take advantage of it,” [Hartley] said. “You look at the schedule … there’s plenty of good days off. Look at this week and next, you can’t ask for anything better than this.”

“[The travel] kind of gets annoying,” [Zhitnik] said. “You get used to it. It’s not physical it’s mental. You have to be mentally fresh. That’s the biggest thing is to be mentally ready.”

And with the makeup of the schedule for the final 11 games, that challenge is just a little bit easier.

For comparison’s sake, Tampa Bay has 8 of their last 11 at home, all of which are against the East. 7 are against current playoff teams, and the remaining 4 are against either Florida or Washington.

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Also from the AJC, Custance says that the Thrashers are creating home ice advantage since the trade deadline.

Moose Sighting

From Craig Custance’s blog:

As Alexei Zhitnik pointed out this morning , these games against the Flyers are big ones. He was on the other end, when the Flyers were beating the Thrashers back in February. He pointed out that if the Thrashers would have beaten his Flyers, they’d be in the hunt for the top spot in the conference right now. But there’s nothing they can do about those losses now.

Kari Lehtonen will start in goal against the Flyers, and Johan Hedberg will start against the Rangers. Kari talked a little today about how nice it is to get the second day of back-to-back games off. He was saying that sometimes in the third period of the first game, he starts thinking about the second game – losing a little focus. it’s human nature, heck as I’m writing this, and thinking about what I have to do next. An NHL goalie, evidently, is no different.

The Thrashers called up (or will, not sure if it’s official yet) Derek MacKenzie from Chicago, basically to get another skater out there for practices. I’m guessing, with players slightly banged up, exercising their option not to practice, it doesn’t hurt to have another guy out there. Since we’re post-trading deadline, there’s no roster limits.