Thrashed!

Now that is a THRASHIN! Was I right or was I right? We did an excellent job of shutting down Darcy Tucker last night. He was held to 2 shots on goal and he took 3 penalties. The penalty minutes were even between the teams, so we did a decent job of staying out of the box. No dumb 5-on-3 chances given either. I told you that when good players come back from a slump they come back big. Back to back 4 point games for Hossa (hat trick and an assist), Kozlov picked up 4 assists, and Mellanby had a nice mid-air swat-in goal on the PP and 2 assists. The stats didn't lie, as the Leafs proved that when they go down after 1 and 2 periods of play, they very rarely come back to win. Kari did an outstanding job in goal, but he got a good amount of help from the D. Not a whole lot of shots were high quality chances, but Lehtonen still had to make some great saves leading to his NHL-leading 4th shutout. I was really impressed with Kovalchuk's defensive play last night. There was at least 2 times where I turned to my friend and said "Kovalchuk did a nice back-checking job there to save that play." There was a Toronto fan in front of us who was a pretty good sport. He kept begging his team to "at least score one goal and not completely embarrass yourselves." That was a fun game, I wish more than 15,092 people had been there to see it. It's getting better though. We're finally starting to get some of the coverage we deserve, and people will start coming to more games as we continue to play well. If you haven't already seen it, NHL.com has an article up about Kovy's improving defensive play. Man, I'm still so excited. It feels so nice to finally beat the Leafs, and to do it in a game like that made it even better.

Holik Owns Former Team

It's always nice to get a W against the Rags, but to do it with Bobby Holik getting the game winner and without Jagr or Shanahan getting any points at MSG just makes it that much sweeter. I think it's hilarious that Holik wasn't chosen as one of the three stars by the NY media. It just shows how petty and bitter they are. How about Hossa's sweet goal? That was exactly the kind of goal I was talking about in my Magical Russians post. When players like him go into a bit of a slump you always know that when they come out of it, they're gonna come out of it big time. I'd say that having an awesome goal and 3 assists would definitely be coming out of it big time. It was an exciting game to watch, although I'd rather us not have to come back from being two goals behind every other game. We still took some bad penalties. I swear it seems like we've had more delay of game penalties and too many men on the ice at this point in the season than we did all of last season. I know that's not true, but we just keep taking these penalties. The D continues to impress me for being in the situation that we're in. Word is that Steve McCarthy will be back tonight. Hopefully he can help get the powerplay back on track tonight against the Leafs.

I'm looking forward to going down to the game tonight. There's a Kennesaw vs Tennesee college hockey game after the regular game which should be fun. I'd like to stay, but I'm sure if I'm going to. I usually walk down to Philips from Tech since it's about a mile and a half, but it probably wouldn't be the best idea to be walking back at 12:30-1 am. I'm ready to see this losing streak to the Leafs ended. I don't want to see any 5-on-3 opportunities for the Leafs tonight, and preferably not too many powerplays. They're 6th in the league for powerplay percentage and our penalty kill is currently 23rd. If we shut down Tucker, stay out of the box, and stop this dump-and-chase crap on the powerplay, I say we walk away with a win tonight. Toronto's win percentage is .000% when trailing after 1 period and .091% when trailing after 2 periods. But, they are 1.000% when leading after 1 period. So let's get on the board early and keep them from outscoring us in the first. Hope to see lots of people at the game tonight. Let's keep Philips loud.

Back in Blue

Whoops, sorry it's been forever since I updated. With school winding down and getting close to exams I've been having a lot of last tests and projects. I don't even know where to start since so many things have happened. From the Battle of Washington, to a (un)lucky bounce loss, to Kari getting his game back and many others. First of all I wanna thank the Blueland Blog for giving me a shoutout. It's very appreciated. It hurts to have 2 - and now 3 - defensemen out. The powerplay continues to have its struggles, and I hope McCarthy returns soon to help it out. I've gotta admit, I wasn't a very big fan of Hnidy last year, but he's really stepped it up and is playing pretty well. Congrats to him on that long awaited goal. The little bit we've seen from Coburn and Popovic hasn't been too bad either. Hopefully Sutton's injury isn't too serious and X gets healthy soon.

The Battle of Washington was interesting to say the least. I know The Sheriff and Bolton were probably both wishing they were on the ice that night. I liked that Sutton was trying to play physical, but when you miss a check you gotta take the miss. This isn't the first time I've seen him stick his arms out while missing a check to hit someone in the face. I'm not sure if he does it on purpose or if it's just kinda the way he does his checks and since he happens to be so tall his arms just end up in the face if he misses. But either way, he's gotta watch those arms. That being said, what happened after that was completely uncalled for. Since Washington had home ice, they got to choose who to put out on the ice last. So Hanlon got to throw out some goons without Hartley being able to match them up. It was quite obvious that Vish wanted nothing to do with Brashear, and Brashear earned every bit of that 3 game suspension. It's not a fight unless both people are swinging. And then for Hanlon to do it AGAIN was even more ridiculous. The refs should have stepped in sooner on the Larsen "fight." The should have gone over as soon as Larsen began to get punched. He can't just stand there forever and take hits, so of course he's going to have to drop the gloves eventually and fight back or hold on. Glen Hanlon absolutely lost his mind. I'm not sure I've ever seen a coach get that crazy. The chicken dance, challenging Hartley, and yelling at Hartley in the hallway after the game were 3 signs that Hanlon had gone crazy. Even though it would have been kinda nice to see us "take the high road" and not fight back at all, it was pretty awesome to see Mellanby drop the gloves. That guy never ceases to impress me. All I know is that you better go to the game on 12/15 to see the rematch of this. The Nasty Nest has some people buying rubber chickens, chicken hats, and someone even bought 70-something kazoos to play the Chicken Dance with at the game on the 15th. People have suggested playing the clip of Hanlon's flip-out on the jumbotron with the Chicken Dance in the background. This game could be very ugly, and to think we've still got 4 games left against them. Might be a busy night for Philips security, but hopefully it won't be.

Anyway, the loss to the Lightning was tough to take. All you can do is remember that someday you'll be the one getting the lucky bounce. And then to have almost the exact same setup against the Panthers. Both Kari and Auld were great in that game. We could have easily scored 5 or 6 goals had it not been for Auld. Lehtonen stopped 37 shots, and it was great to see the Lehtonen I used to know in between the pipes. Moose did a good job filling in while Kari was slumping. It's so nice to have 2 good goaltenders for once.

Sorry for the lack of updates again. Don't forget your tickets for the Washington game on the 15th and remember to bring your rubber chicken.

Magical Russians

WOW

That pretty much describes this week for me. I attended Monday's blasting of the Bruins and got to witness my favorite player get the trick. The powerplay was finally firing on all cylinders again. We kept it simple, just getting shots on net. And boy did it work. There is probably nothing I love more in this world than watching Ilya Kovalchuk blast massive slapshots straight into the goal. It's absolutely beautiful. Watching him on a breakaway slinging a nasty wrister past goalies and watching Marian Hossa undress multiple defensemen with jaw-dropping moves and scoring are close behind. But man do I love the huge slapshots. Kozlov picked up 4 assists as well. He's undoubtedly the most underrated player on the Thrash, and I'd say in the top 5 most underrated players in the NHL. The 2 goals in the last minute and a half or so really sucked. I felt bad for Moose. Something I've noticed about him is the weird way he handles breakaways or when players have odd-man rushes on him. He comes out and just slides on his side stacking the pads in a kind of haphazard way that doesn't seem to work too well. I realize he's smaller, so he's got to be more athletic rather than having perfect positioning, but it seems like he flops around a bunch. Not knocking on Moose though, he's a great goalie.

And then tonight was amazing. My friend won tickets on the Spin and Win wheel (or is it Spin to Win? whatever), so we decided to use them tonight. Our tickets were in 218, first row, so they were pretty good. About 5-7 minutes into the game, a girl who works for Philips came up and asked us if we wanted to play dodgeball on the ice during the first intermission. We obviously did, and it was an awesome experience. We had to leave to go with her down to where the zamboni's come out. So we missed a little bit of the game, but got to watch most of the period on tv's down there. Standing on NHL ice, my favorite team's ice no less, in front of 16,253 (more like half of that sense it was intermission, but let me dream!) was great. I was so excited. My team lost unfortunately. I got out when a ball I threw was caught, and then my friend (who was on the opposite team) eliminated our last player. They always announce goofy prizes for the winning team that I had figured were just a joke (usually crappy cd's). But they weren't kidding around. Everyone on my friend's team won Melissa Etheridge cd's hahaha.

I got to see some cool behind-the-scenes stuff while being down there for dodgeball. The warmup goals, zamboni's, replacement glass, referee's room, etc. During the second intermission a guy who was friends with the people sitting behind us asked if we wanted to swap tickets with him. His tickets were in 119, 10 rows off the ice, so of course we said yes. From there I witnessed the comeback and the goal that completed Kozlov's hat trick. Back-to-back Russian hat tricks that I saw in person; so awesome. I also got to see Kozlov's trick last year against the Sens when the Thrashers won 8-3 and the Hossa chant first got started. Tonight was one of the best night's I've ever had.

The Thrasher's are first in the NHL now too! Even if it's only for one night, this has been a long time coming, and I'm basking in it. Even though I probably won't be able to sleep for awhile, I suppose I need to try.

Good night, may all your slapshots find the net with a blistering force and may all your checks deliver devastating results.

Thrashers @ Islanders

4-1 Thrashers win

Unfortunately the game was not on SportsSouth, and I don't have CenterIce. Nor was I able to make it out to a place that does have it, so I was stuck listening to the game on the radio. I don't have a whole lot to say since I didn't actually see the game, but I'll throw a few things out there. But before I do, I'd like to point out that the NHL has partnered with Google and is showing videos of NHL games (new and classics) for free for the first 2 weeks of this month. So I'll catch the video of this game whenever it makes its way over there and edit this entry.

Sounded like we came out hard and fast tonight, which is always good. Seemed to have played good in all 3 periods as well. Good to hear that Mellanby only had a stinger and isn't seriously hurt. And how about JP Vigier? He got his nose completely busted last night and still played tonight with as much grit as he usually does AND he scored a goal. Without a shield too, as far as I know.

Thrashers are now tied with the Sabres for first in the Eastern Conference, although the Sabres have 3 games in hand. Something I didn't like tonight were the too many men on the ice penalties. Twice in one game. I haven't gone back through all the games to check, but it seems like we've been taking a fair amount of these. These kind of penalties are really dumb, and we shouldn't ever take any.

Our road record improved to 6-1-2. That's 14 out of 18 points, 1.56 PPG on the road. I know there hasn't been many games yet, but that's better than our home PPG average of 1.29. You expect to do better at home, so as the season goes on the home PPG will go up. So I think we're off to great start, especially playing on the road.

New Kid on the Block

So I finally got around to blogging. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but never took the time to actually do it. But here I am, allow me to introduce myself:

My name is Austin. I have lived in the suburbs of Atlanta for 19 of the 20 years I've been alive. I'm pretty new to hockey. I played some street hockey as a kid (who didn't?), but never anything serious. Went to an Atlanta Knights game or two, but never saw the Flames when they were here in Atlanta. I went to my first Thrashers game a year before the lockout and immediately became interested. I have to admit, I was originally drawn to hockey because of the fighting, but quickly realized there was much more to it than fighting (although I still love a great fight). I currently go to school at the Georgia Institute of Technology, so I'm about a mile and a half from Philips Arena. I began playing some roller hockey last year and plan on trying out for Tech's roller hockey team for the spring semester. You probably already figured I'm an analytical person since I go to Tech. So as you might guess, I'll likely post lots of statistical things. Basically, I love hockey and I love the Thrashers, and that's about all you need to know.

My entries will mostly pertain to the Thrashers, with some in-general hockey entries here and there. Maybe even some that have nothing to do with anything. If you've got a hockey blog, I'd love to check it out (and possibly link to it) so leave me a comment with your url. Feel free to link to me as well. Anyway, enough about me. On to hockey!