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Home > Jeff Schultz > Archives > 2008 > October > 10
Friday, October 10, 2008
It’s only one win for Thrashers, but …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Playoff berths aren’t clinched on opening night. Even guessing direction can be risky.
So what did the Thrashers really want Friday night? Signs.
Something to suggest the offense will not be overly dependent on the one star, Ilya Kovalchuk. Something to suggest the goalie, Kari Lehtonen, can make the difference. Something to suggest one of the NHL’s lowest-payrolls and coast-to-coast projections of doom might be slightly overstated.
All three: check. What does one win mean? We’ll find out over the next 81 games. But the fact the Thrashers opened the season with a 7-4 victory over the Washington Capitals counts for two points and a second-look.
They scored seven goals — none by Kovalchuk. They blew a 3-0 lead but Lehtonen kept them in it, even stopping Alex Ovechkin on a penalty shot, after Washington rallied to even things at 4-4.
And they won — something they had done only twice in eight previous season openers. Also something they didn’t do until game seven last season.
“Last year we had a bad start and it just kind of sat around in our heads,” said Bryan
Little, who scored twice after having only six goals in 48 games last season. “You win a game like this — now we believe we can have a good season.”
“Look at the way we played,” Colby Armstrong said. “Look at the character we showed coming back after they tied the game. That’s going to be the mentality of this team. Things are changing around here. That’s how we’re going to play this year. We’re going to battle. We’re going to be a tough team to play against.”
That would be a change. They started 0-6 last season. They fired a coach and finished 28th out of 30 teams. They missed the playoffs for the seventh time in eight years. They allowed the most goals in the league. They traded their second-best player (Marian Hossa) at the trade deadline. They entered the season with one of the league’s lowest payrolls.
How many ominous signs can one team start the season with?
But Friday they won, with John Anderson standing behind an NHL bench for the first time as a head coach. They won, beating Washington, generally believed to be one of the up-and-coming teams in the league.
So that’s one. Was it perfect? Hardly. They led 3-0 — and everybody looked around to see if they were in the right building.
They never actually looked as dominating as 3-0. It’s more like the game was being played at 78 speed and Capitals goalie Jose Theodore was at 331/3. (He was finally pulled for backup Brent Johnson after Atlanta’s fourth goal.) But given that early 3-0 leads have been a rarity for the franchise, Anderson wasn’t going to complain.
Problem was, the Thrashers’ play never caught up to the score and it didn’t take long for things to unravel. The Capitals scored four of the next five goals to tie it, 4-4, heading into the third period.
One Washington goal came short-handed when the Thrashers got caught in a line change. Two others came within a span of 52 seconds on a power play after Marty Reasoner — who was signed to kill penalties, not take them — was given a double-minor for high-sticking the Caps’ Tom Poti.
The Thrashers’ hope was that the preseason wouldn’t qualify as foreshadowing. They went 1-5. They allowed 27 goals in five straight losses. What happened Friday seemed to indicate that wasn’t an aberration.
But then Lehtonen stopped Ovechkin on a penalty shot. He stopped 26 of 30 shots through two periods and 39 of 43 in the game. Little broke the tie with 6:03 left. Two more goals followed.
“We competed, we battled,” Little said. “We never got down.”
They won. A sign.
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