AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2006 > December > 23
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Thrashers have yet to go splat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It’s the holidays, and they’re still here. I know. Been there, then collapsed there. But look at this season so far. A four-game losing streak is followed by six wins in seven games. Five losses are followed by three wins.
No splat. December is almost over.
Do I hear January?
“There’s still some mysteries,” Thrashers coach Bob Hartley said Saturday when asked if he is learning something about his team. “Sometimes we’re just like a box of chocolates. You have to take a bite to find out what’s on the inside.”
Skate, Forrest, skate!
Are the leg braces finally off?
The Thrashers dumped the New Jersey Devils 5-2 on Saturday night at Philips Arena. They are now 21-10-6 and rank second overall in the Eastern Conference. They are banking points early and allowing themselves room for error in the second half, which is not exactly a franchise trait (the banking part, not error part).
They are not perfect. They continue to give up too many shots (38 Saturday, though only nine in the third period). They remain just north of pedestrian at center. (Things you thought you’d never see, and shouldn’t ever see: Jason Krog centering Marian Hossa and Slava Kozlov.)
But they’re winning, and they’ve shown the ability to duct-tape closed any potential trap doors. Eight days ago, they lost 6-0 to the New York Islanders to extend a losing streak to five, prompting a players-only meeting.
What has changed since?
“Desperation,” Bobby Holik said.
Whatever works.
We are weeks away from stringing together the words “playoff lock.” But seemingly there is only one thing that could derail this bunch from finally reaching the postseason: a cry for help that isn’t answered. We’ve seen it before.
Thrashers general manager Don Waddell said Saturday he won’t sit on his hands and allow this team to go into a prolonged slump. He’ll make a trade, if necessary.
“I’ll do something,” he said. “That’s why I’m staying so close to the team.”
Words are one thing, actions another. But the pronouncement should at least alleviate some concerns (and carry more weight than, say, a playoff “guarantee.”)
Remember two seasons ago? The team started strong. Then came a dreadful stretch beginning, well, right about now. The Thrashers lost a game Dec. 28 in Ottawa and proceeded to win only two of 21.
Forrest would’ve screamed, “I’ve gotta save Bubba!”
But Waddell didn’t make a significant move. Playoff hopes spontaneously combusted before our eyes. The fact ownership was in flux at the time might have limited what Waddell could do in terms of adding salary, but dealing with such constraints is what a general manager is paid for.
Last year, the Thrashers dealt with the dizzying parade of injured goalies but had rebounded by midseason. Then came a seven-game losing streak in January. It forced a late-season scramble that left the team two points short of the final playoff berth in the Eastern Conference.
The Thrashers have had defensive problems of late. They allowed an average of only 29 shots through 29 games but are yielding more than 36 per in the past eight. Some of that can be attributed to injuries on defense and to center Steve Rucchin. That should improve when defensemen Garnet Exelby and Andy Sutton return.
The bigger issue is at center, where the Thrashers lost Marc Savard before the season. Their four forwards down the middle Saturday were Holik, Krog, Niko Kapanen and Derek MacKenzie (just recalled from the minors). That likely won’t get it done, certainly not in a playoff series, when power plays might be less frequent and even-strength playmaking is more critical.
Waddell admitted: “We don’t have the playmaking guy who can help [Ilya] Kovalchuk score more goals five-on-five.”
If Waddell decides to make a move, he’s in a good position. The Thrashers are about $3.5 million under the $44 million salary cap. Given that salaries are prorated for cap purposes, Waddell estimates he could technically bring in a “$5 million player” on Jan. 1 and an “$11 million player” near the Feb. 27 trading deadline. (Not that he’s committing to that, mind you.)
“If we’re 100 percent healthy, we really like our team,” he said. “We don’t feel compelled that we have to do something.”
But he’s watching. We’re all watching. So far, no splat.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Once upon a time at Christmas
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Those were days of innocence. In smalltown America, life was without pomp and swagger. The arrival of the Christmas season certified all of this. The center of everything was the church. Those of us still of the growing age followed our parents, and the church is where our parents led us. In our little corner of the world there was only one faith, and it was all clearly set forth in the Bible. We had no idea that in other parts of the world other people worshipped other idols.
It was read to us from the pulpit. We studied it in summer Bible school, whether we understood it or not. We knew of no other faith in the world. Jesus Christ was the son of God, and that is what we were taught, and that is what Christmas was about. No questions. No doubts.
Christmas was a magical season. We began looking forward to it as soon as the calendar was turned to the page of December. There was none of that pre-Thanksgiving Day advertising and commercials in those times. Christmas was given its time, compressed into its own wintry space and anticipated not always for the right reasons, hard as my mother tried. She baked cakes, several kinds, and always one fruitcake, one that had a special ingredient never found in one of those commercial bricks: Love. It was Mama’s cake, and Mama’s fruitcake was baked with love. Oh, what fragrance she created in that kitchen.
There was always the Christmas pageant at the little white church on the hill. We started rehearsals three weeks before the annual Christmas program. We shepherds shivered under our sheets — every year each of us was the same, and I was always a shepherd. (My brother, who was very tall, was always Pontius Pilate, which I thought was unfair. I thought he should have had a chance to be a wise man, or a good guy one time or another. But he was always the wicked Pontius.)
When I say we shivered, I lie not. The heat in our church was supplied by a pot-belly stove, and they never fired it up for rehearsals. Saved wood for the main events. So we shivered, and we giggled, and we shoved, or even punched each other in the ribs. It wasn’t easy being so nice and Christian.
Our reward after the Christmas service was the “treat,” as we called it. A bag with some candy or an apple or orange, if the harvest had been good and the price wasn’t too high. Then the lights were turned low, and we all sang “Silent Night,” which I think is the most beautiful Christmas song of all, and you could feel the warmth flow all through your body.
Then go home and go to bed and toss restlessly, so anxious for the dawn to see what was under our little tree.
We never had a big tree. There was no such thing as a Christmas tree lot then. You went out and cut your own, which was my annual mission. I took the axe and went into the woods behind Alson Cranford’s house and picked out a nice one and toted it home, so I didn’t pick the biggest tree in the forest. Decorations were not extravagant. I’m not even sure we had a string of lights, but it was always beautiful to me.
So on Christmas morning the kids were up by dawn’s early light, except my big brother, who knew all the secrets of Santa Claus. I don’t remember that Mr. Claus ever caused me to break out in goose pimples with anything he left, but I do remember that I never got the bicycle I wanted. My little sister did, and another year she got a terrier, and so it went. Later, by the time my joints creaked, I looked under the tree and there was a bicycle at last. A beauty, with a little bell and all. My wife couldn’t bear the thought of a little boy going through his whole life without finding a bicycle under the Christmas tree.
That’s Christmas for you. If it has lost some of the meaning I was brought up with, it’s no fault of the kind of Christmas we observed at our house, and in our little town. Christmas was the holiest day of every year, once you learned the real meaning, and that it has nothing to do with what you find under the tree on that glorious morning. Merry Christmas to all.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Bad behavior’s the nature of sports beast
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They’re trying.
Whatever that means.
In other words, no matter how often those who run sports leagues deliver the strongest of rules, fines or suspensions to end thuggish behavior, the knuckleheads will roll their eyes and throw another punch or three. For instance: One moment, Carmelo Anthony is joining drug dealers in a video called “Stop Snitchin.’ ” The next, that same star of the Denver Nuggets is turning fantasy into reality by seeking to become Suge Knight on the court.
Which means all of this madness is just in these knuckleheads. Not from birth, but from the aggressive nature of competition, especially at the highest levels, and from the detrimental contributions of many who have been in their universe.
Don’t take it from me, since my college degree is in economics instead of psychology. Listen to Dr. Patrick Devine, the Braves psychologist throughout the 1980s, who also is in his 27th year as a professor in the psychology department at Kennesaw State University.
“Men are aggressive. There’s no doubt about it, because we have the testosterone and the hormone systems built up to do it, so we don’t need a lot of encouragement to go to that violent level, because it is naturally there within us,” said Devine, before getting to those growing number of knuckleheads. “Is this [athletes becoming more violent in action] something that is inherent in the individual? No. I think that we, as a society as a whole, have allowed things to get this way.”
What things? Well, just this week, NBA commissioner David Stern suspended Anthony long enough to lose $640,097 in salary for his sucker punch during the NBA’s latest brawl. Earlier this season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told Albert Haynesworth to get lost for an unprecedented five games after he used his 300-something pounds to stomp on the head of an opponent. Even the NHL’s Gary Bettman is trying to do the right thing with knuckleheads, and his sport ranks fighting along the lines of breathing.
Remember Todd Bertuzzi’s thuggish act two years ago against Steve Moore? Not only did Bettman suspend Bertuzzi indefinitely, but the commissioner slapped Vancouver Canucks with a $250,000 fine for “failure to prevent the atmosphere that may have led to [the incident].”
With apologies to soccer moms, their sport isn’t immune, either. Need we go further than the World Cup last summer, when France’s Zinedine Zidane charged and rammed his Italian opponent with his head? Zidane was upset because he said the other guy was saying nasty things about his his sister. Although Zidane later retired, he was suspended three games, fined $6,000 and asked to perform community service by the FIFA folks.
None of these episodes has decreased the knuckleheads. In fact, they’ve increased them in some cases.
“Kids idolize these guys, and those types of behaviors get modeled at very young ages, and it gets into their system as the way to behave,” said Dr. Paul Fair, an Atlanta psychologist in stress and anger management. “People love to see replays of a great move in a football game, for instance. But you also get to see replays of basketball or football players beating up on each other. So guess what? Obviously, the viewers — the fans — like that. If you have a steady diet of that for years, it’s going to eventually affect you.”
Combine that with The Authoritarian Coach becoming a dying breed at all levels, and you really have a mess. Said Dr. Devine, an offensive lineman during the 1970s at John Carroll University, “With a Tom Landry or a Bear Bryant or a Vince Lombardi, there was a sense of discipline and decorum. Today, we’re too afraid to enforce the rules, because we’re afraid we’re going to offend somebody’s individualism. This philosophy has worked its way up from the Pee Wee level to the pros. Now the ketchup has spilled out of the bottle, and we’re not going to be able to get it back in there.”
Not for a generation. Even if we go back to the future right now.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore, Thrashers / NHL
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