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Saturday, October 22, 2005
Thrashers wake up from nightmare
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Several words came to mind when this Thrashers’ roster was put together this summer, and none of them were the following: Uninspired, underachieving, lazy, lousy, defenseless, powerless, dirty and cheap.
Several words came to mind after a 2-5 start. See above.
They lost at home to Toronto, 9-1. They were shutout three times in five losses. Over four straight defeats that followed the signing of Ilya Kovalchuk, they had as many players suspended for various acts of thuggery (two) as they had goals. (The opponents had 22. Goals, not suspensions.) The power play, expected to be the league’s best, went 0-for-25.
On Thursday, the Thrashers lost at home to Tampa Bay, 6-0. This was what Don Waddell said early Saturday: “That loss was the hardest loss I’ve suffered as a general manager. I wasn’t happy how we lost that game. You can talk about goaltending all you want, but we also have to help him. We have to score some goals. Once we got down a goal or two, we packed it in.”
Quitters.
Sorry. Forget that word.
Two nights after the Tampa Bay game and the day after coach Bob Hartley tried something completely different — an 8 a.m. practice the morning after a night game — the Thrashers did something as improbable as looking so comatose with such a skilled roster.
They beat New Jersey, 4-3. They did it by falling behind, 3-1, then scoring three straight goals off of the Devils’ perennial All-Star goalie, Martin Brodeur — who was outplayed by a kid making his second NHL start, Adam Berkhoel.
This was Waddell after the game: “It’s like we just won the Stanley Cup.”
The Thrashers have had losing streaks before. But they have never had losing streaks in a season with such a talented roster that is accompanied by such high expectations. There is losing, and then there is getting smacked.
Before Kovalchuk played his first game, the Thrashers were 2-1 and coming off consecutive wins over Washington by a combined score of 15-2. The fact they couldn’t keep a goalie together with duct tape almost seemed a relative afterthought.
“We lose our two goalies and Kovie comes in, you think that might be a fair trade,” coach Bob Hartley said. “We just lost our game. You lose a game or two, then you start pressing. You start asking tons of questions instead of just playing the game.”
Said Marc Savard, who scored the tying goal Saturday, “These last four games have been the worst time in my life. It seemed like we had nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
You don’t learn about a team during routs of the Capitals. You learn about it during losing streaks. Good teams work through problems, and Thrashers weren’t doing that. They were, in another word, pathetic. Even Bobby Holik, the veteran center signed largely to lead the team through times like this, looked invisible.
Worse, a veteran-laden team had shown no composure, no discipline. The final minutes of blowout losses had deteriorated into a string of brawls, elbows and high sticks. Two players, Andy Sutton and Eric Boulton, were suspended. Two opposing coaches had basically referred to the Thrashers as cheapshot artists and/or cowards. Toronto’s GM even crashed Hartley’s post-game interview.
The breakfast with Bob practice seemed to get everybody’s attention. “Bob made us realize our hockey life is pretty simple,” said Ronald Petrovicky, who scored twice in the third. “We have to win. He tried to make us think about what we’re doing and how fortunate we are to play this game.”
Still, there was Saturday’s goaltending matchup. The Thrashers had Berkhoel, whose primary qualification was that he had a healthy groin. It’s not a good sign when the head coach gets all of his goalies together two weeks into the season, asks who’s healthy and only one guy can raise his hand. Or leg.
The Devils had a three-time Stanley Cup-winner, two-time Vezina Trophy winner and eight-time All-Star. The Thrashers had somebody who won in their professional debut last season — against Augusta in the East Coast league.
“Yeah, this was just a little bit bigger,” he said later, laughing.
They’re still only 3-5. But at least a few adjectives are on hold.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Reserves do the job for Dogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Athens — Georgia played Arkansas Saturday afternoon in Sanford Stadium, and you never saw a more beautiful day for a football game. I mean, a day that sparkled under the sun, the kind of day meant for football in the South. Georgia was supposed to win the game, and Georgia won, but not the way most of these 92,746 woofers expected the Bulldogs to win.
When your rank in the nation is No. 4, and you’re playing a team below the radar, your constituents expect you to win in a style that brings them comfort and joy. This one didn’t. Not one Bulldog in the house breathed a relaxed breath until Joe Tereshinski III took a knee and the final second ticked off the clock.
Joe Tereshinski III, did you say? Are you confused, you ask? Where was D.J. Shockley and why wasn’t he taking the knee? This Tereshinski III, this is not golf. Football players don’t have sticks after their name, those are for Love and Armour and Howell, the country clubbing golf class. Or maybe some quarterback at Princeton or Harvard.
Well, it’s this way, and if you’re a Bulldog, brace yourself:
Shockley came down injured in the second quarter. He was trying to break away from a Razorback rush and came down in a heap. Didn’t look too bad at first, was able to walk off the field, but then was escorted to the locker room, then later reappeared on the bench wearing a gray T-shirt with “Finish The Drill” on the back. He was, indeed, finished.
That brought on Tereshinski, a junior with a mystical name in Georgia football. His daddy played here and his granddaddy, and both were stars. Joe didn’t expect to play much this year, backing up Shockley, who was finally making himself at home at quarterback, and looking better each week.
Nobody can be sure how long Shockley will be out, or if he will be back at all. But truth to tell, without D.J. Shockley, Georgia is not a No. 4 team in this nation. It was a struggle winning this game by the skin of its teeth, 23-20, when those mysterious people who set odds had projected Arkansas to lose by anywhere from 19 to 21 points.
This old codger isn’t so sure Georgia would have won much more convincingly even with Shockley in the saddle. This Arkansas team has a future, and if you haven’t heard the name Darren McFadden before, file it away. This kid is just a freshman from across the river in North Little Rock, and he can cover 40 yards in 4.3 seconds. He almost took charge of this game by himself. He scored on one run of 70 yards, and in the shadow of the evening, it was shown that he gained more yards (190) than all the Georgia running backs combined, and just 27 yards less than the whole Georgia team. The Razorbacks are young, just out of the cradle, and down the road, give Houston Nutt a passing threat and they’ll make many an afternoon uncomfortable for their SEC brethren.
Chances are, we’ll be seeing more of Tereshinski in the coming weeks. This was his first test in such a crucible situation, and the junior was not without his golden moments. On his third play, he lobbed a perfect pass that Mohamed Massaquoi reeled in at the 1-yard line, and that set up Georgia’s second touchdown. And later, he connected with Sean Bailey for 43 yards.
He had his lapses, but remember, this was a guy pitching his first big-time game. It was, in the long run, the vigilant defense and the special teams that saw this Georgia bunch through the gathering crises, lesser lights pitching in, as in the case of senior Mike Gilliam, rarely heard from, who recovered a fumbled punt that set up the field goal that would make the final difference.
“Oh, we could lose this game,” the old gamester Larry Munson had groaned before kickoff. “We could get beat today, I’m telling you. Our defense is full of holes, three of our best in the middle of the line are out. I don’t like the looks of this at all.”
Turns out, his old broadcast growl wasn’t crying wolf. But in the end, it was those who stood in for the wounded who filled the gap and saved the game.
Permalink | Comments (42) | Categories: Furman Bisher, UGA / SEC
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