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Saturday, October 8, 2005
A sign of committed owners
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Everybody says they want to win. The reason everybody doesn’t win is the “want” usually is backed by ownership with the depth of a cardboard cutout.
You learn about “want” during the phone calls. When a general manager phones his boss about paying a star player and the line suddenly goes dead, that’s when “want” becomes ownership Latin for, “Well, I don’t want it that bad. But you better win, anyway, or you’re fired.”
Something important happened Saturday, and it goes beyond the fact the Thrashers became whole again (or at least will when Ilya Kovalchuk has a work visa). The same ownership group that survived a cartoonish hostile takeover attempt by one member and spent $70 million on Joe Johnson ponied up again.
Spending $32 million on Kovalchuk, an actual franchise player, might not seem as great a risk as committing more than twice that to an NBA player who has never been a centerpiece. But it illustrates there is something behind the “want” with the Atlanta Spirit — and in a sport still looking to grow roots here.
“Honestly this is an important experiment for us,” said Bruce Levenson, the Thrashers’ lead owner. “We’re going to find out here in these next exciting years whether this can be a hockey town. Frankly, I was very heartened by what’s transpired in Tampa, the way that city has embraced hockey.”
NHL history is written in red ink. The lack of significant TV revenue screams: If you really want to own a hockey team, you’re doing it for the thrills, the financial upside. Otherwise, buy a ticket.
The Thrashers could have continued to play hardball with Kovalchuk. They could have stayed at $28 million, lose him to some obscure team in Russia and still had a decent team — just not a potentially great one. Certainly, that would’ve been cheaper. It’s not as if signing Kovalchuk comes with a guarantee that reads: “Anybody signing this player will win the Stanley Cup and sell another 10,000 season tickets.”
But signing Kovalchuk shows a commitment more often spoken than actually seen in sports.
“You go through a lot of ways of rationalizing something like this,” Levenson said. “You go through all of the mathematical calculations. We did buy this team in hopes of having a rationalized business. We’re not just going to throw money away, but this was an investment in the future of this team.”
The two sides basically met at the middle — Kovalchuk’s agent originally was stuck on $35 million. But Waddell never really wanted to go this high, nor did he know if it would make a difference. He was in Washington on Thursday night and phoned agent Jay Grossman. “The conversation was professional, but it went nowhere,” Waddell said.
He couldn’t sleep. At 3 a.m., he got up and booked a flight to New York. By noon Friday, he was in Grossman’s office. The two found common ground a couple of hours later and then sought league approval for the contract’s structure and language. At 4 p.m., Kovalchuk was in his agent’s office with Waddell to go over details. (The NHL didn’t actually approve the deal until 4:57 p.m. Saturday.)
Waddell wore a smile all night Saturday. He sat in his suite with another happy GM, the Hawks’ Billy Knight. He referred to Kovalchuk as “a franchise player,” adding with a laugh, “I guess I can say that now.” (Such pre-deal admissions erode leverage.)
Of the investment, he said: “We need to have a good year this year to get hockey fans back in the building. People are waiting for us to take that next step, and we will.”
For the second consecutive night, the Thrashers flattened the Washington Capitals, 8-1. It was during the first period when Waddell announced Kovalchuk’s signing to the sellout crowd at Philips Arena. Captain Scott Mellanby already knew of the deal but said, “I didn’t tell the guys because I thought we should be focused on the game.”
Said Peter Bondra, “Honestly, I didn’t find out until [the announcement]. The guys got pumped up. We were almost jumping around.”
“They’ve made a lot of moves here,” Mellanby said. “It shows a commitment to win the Stanley Cup.”
It’s something to back up the “want.”
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Victory settles where this team belongs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Knoxville — The question was specific: Could scarcely tested Georgia play with toughened Tennessee? The answer was as broad and as sweeping as these far-flung United States: Georgia can play with anybody anywhere. That means the team in Los Angeles. That means the team in Texas. That means the team in Blacksburg.
Anybody anywhere.
“People questioned us,” said safety Greg Blue. “They said we’d had no challenge the first four games. They said, ‘Can you beat Tennessee?’ Well, we beat them.”
Of the many splendid road victories achieved under Mark Richt, this was the most comprehensive. Even the rout of the Volunteers in Knoxville in 2003 turned on Sean Jones’ fumble return at the end of the first half. This one turned on nothing. This one was all Georgia from the opening kick. Tennessee was lucky to be close after three quarters, and then it was close no more.
D.J. Shockley threw a bad interception and lost an unfortunate fumble and still he never seemed close to losing his grip. “D.J. didn’t flinch,” said Richt, speaking of his quarterback’s response to the turnover that gave the Vols their only glimmer of hope, but the coach might well have been referring to every man on his traveling squad. Georgia had the better offense, the better defense, the better special teams. The better coach, too.
And to think: This was billed as the Bulldogs’ bridge year, the transitional period from the era of Greene and Pollack and VanGorder to … what? A lessened team and lesser achievements? Yeah, that was the expectation in January, in August, even last week. But look now. Look at Shockley, playing as well in a big game as the sainted Greene ever did. Look at the defense, coming within an eyeblink of laying a goose egg on the Big Orange. Look at an untested team capable of entering the massive stadium on the river and acting as if it owned the joint.
“It’s all about regrouping,” said Shockley, referring to his immediate response to the interception — he found Kenneth Harris deep on Georgia’s next snap — but “regrouping” can stand as the theme for 2005. (Really, “Finish The Drill” is so yesterday.) They got really good for three years, and now they’re really good again with different guys doing the business.
“We played a great team and played great,” said Richt, and there was no other way to view this one. Tennessee proved itself in its epic comeback at LSU, and now Georgia has proved it’s even better than Tennessee. The Bulldogs made an estimable opponent look slow and limited and undisciplined. (The Vols were called for 12 penalties. Yikes.) Georgia ran harder and tackled better and didn’t yield to self-doubt when Tennessee cut it to 13-7 and the massive stadium was literally rocking.
“I didn’t feel like we were coming unglued,” said rover Tra Battle. “We just knew we had to regain the momentum. We say something on the sideline — ‘GTBB.’ It means, ‘Get the ball back.’?”
Sure enough, Georgia did. Battle stripped the ball from Josh Briscoe near midfield and recovered the fumble himself. That bought the field position that led to Mikey Henderson’s downing of Gordon Ely-Kelso’s punt at the 1, which in turn spawned the clinching punt return by Thomas Flowers. With more than half the fourth quarter remaining, the mighty Vols were done.
And now we — and the football world, from Corso and Herbstreit on down — must view Georgia differently than we did when the weekend began. This isn’t a team lucky to ranked No. 5 in the nation. This, once again, is a team of elite quality.
“We proved we can win in a hostile environment against a great team,” Harris said. “We proved a lot to the nation. We belong where we are.”
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