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Saturday, April 14, 2007
Thrashers’ best players failing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Before this series began, Bob Hartley boiled playoff success down to two elements.
One was obvious: goaltending.
The other should’ve seemed obvious: goal scorers.
After that everything sort of falls in place. Or falls apart.
“The best players come to play,” Hartley said. “It’s about clutch performers — goalies and scorers, those are the guys who come up with big performances. It’s the time of the year when some individuals come up performances that overshadow their talent. But if your best players show up, you’ll be fine.”
Marian Hossa: 0 points.
Slava Kozlov: 0 points.
Ilya Kovalchuk: He scored one goal Saturday, tying him for the team lead with Pascal Dupuis, Eric Belanger — and Shane Hnidy.
The Thrashers: not fine.
There are a lot of things you might want to see through two playoff games. Shane Hnidy being tied for the goal-scoring lead isn’t one of them.
The Thrashers went 0-for-6 on the power play Saturday, when most of the aforementioned best players are on the ice. They lost 2-1 to the New York Rangers and are now down 2-0 in their virgin playoff series, going to Manhattan.
“We can’t get frustrated,” Hossa said. “We just have to find a way to score, and I have to find a way to be productive.”
Give him points for honesty. Hossa might be one of the five best players in the league. But the one criticism that followed him from Ottawa was a tendency to go quiet in the postseason. That might merely have been a case of the scatter-shooting Canadian media looking for a sacrificial lamb whenever the Senators took an unexpected playoff dive.
But if Hossa and Kozlov are actually in this series, they must be skating with some sort of cloaking device.
The Rangers’ first goal of the series was scored by Jaromir Jagr. Their winning goals have come from Michael Nylander and Brendan Shanahan.
For one team, the best players came to play.
Hossa: “It’s frustrating, but I have to fight through it.”
Kovalchuk: “We need to get more screens because their goalie is big. We need to get in there, get dirty, score some dirty goals.”
Clean, dirty, off the roof, Sean Avery’s head — Hartley won’t be picky. He’s already benched a starting goalie. But he can’t bench a forward line. Calling up three guys from the Chicago Wolves wouldn’t quite have the same impact as playing Johan Hedberg did on Saturday.
Hartley’s first significant coaching decision of the series — to sit Kari Lehtonen after Thursday’s 4-3 loss — didn’t backfire. Until the last four minutes of Game 2, Hedberg was shutting out the Rangers. New York’s only goal was scored by the arena. It was a fluke to the 10th power in the first period, when Avery flipped the puck into the Thrashers’ zone from outside the blue line and it caromed off a partition between the glass and into an open net (Hedberg had left the crease to meet the expected puck’s arrival along the boards).
That was New York’s only goal until Shanahan converted a pass from Avery in the slot for the game winner with 4:01 left, after Kovalchuk had tied it. Hedberg made 37 saves, several on rebounds and a breakaway. He probably did enough to earn another start. But it won’t matter if the offense continues to look anemic.
The Thrashers have been the more physical team of the two. Maybe that gets them a few points in the WBC rankings, but not here.
They have not played smart. The Rangers have 77 shots in two games. Avery, who is paid to be a pest, has gotten under the team’s skin, as much as some players don’t want to admit it. (Kovalchuk: “He means nothing. I don’t even want to talk about him.”)
No. They don’t want to talk about him. They just want to retaliate. Kovalchuk and Tkachuk both chased after the Rangers’ forward during a power play and drew minor penalties.
When asked if his team showed its frustration, Hartley said: “I don’t think it’s frustration. I think it’s the love we have for Sean Avery.”
They might want to start creating some of their own love.
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Trainer reigns at steeplechase
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Kingston — Eventually they’re going to have to change the name of Kingston Downs, tomorrow, if not sooner. You’ve heard the term “Horses for courses.” Well, here’s a “trainer for a course.” Change the name of Kingston to Sheppard Downs, and you’ve got it.
Jonathan Sheppard arrived in this country from England in 1961 with a career as a jockey in mind. And he did ride for a while, but then the light came on. Instead of riding horses, why not get in the business of training and grooming them and leave the saddle duty to somebody else? Besides, he was getting a little heavy for it, though riders of jumping horses don’t have to starve themselves down to pygmy size as do those who pilot flat racers.
Well, that was $11 million or so ago in earnings, and by this time he is the prime trainer of steeplechase horses in the country. And he increased his lifetime take Saturday afternoon at the aforementioned Kingston Downs, which has become like home field to Sheppard since the grass course opened 13 years ago. His stable turned in two wins and two seconds at the annual horsefest Saturday, the hillsides banked with thousands of party-going Georgians who have a taste for the great outdoors and the sight of hurdling horses.
Star of the show was the 8-year-old Seafaring Man, brown-coated son of Sea Hero, winner of the Kentucky Derby in 1993 bearing the colors of the distinguished Paul Mellon. In the irons, as she was on all four of Sheppard’s jumpers, was the young Danielle Hodsdon, steeplechasing’s leading rider last year. Seafaring Man got away to a laggard start, but that is of little matter over a course of two miles. Hodsdon lay back in the field, content to let the others, mainly Mark the Shark and Bow Strada, scrap it out up front, then turned it on coming into the stretch and won pulling away. Bow Strada finished second and The Looper third in the $75,000 featured Georgia Cup.
It was a return to the wars for Seafaring Man, who didn’t race the entire 2006 season. “It’s good to see him show such form after a year away,” Sheppard said. “I first saw him at Keeneland one day and I liked his size. I approached the owner on the backside and I bought him just a couple of years ago.”
It was a card of six races that offered combined purses of $210,000, much of which landed in the bankroll of two men the Atlanta Steeplechase Committee honored for their years of racing. Dr. John Griggs of Kentucky, an Auburn alumnus, won the Irongate Cup with Hip Hop, Chip Miller in the saddle. Angel del Viento, an Argentine import, won the Sport of Kings maiden race, Richard Boucher up. Then Sheppard shifted into gear, won the Grey Goose Hurdle with Hodsdon up on Slew’s Peak, and so it went, the feature clearing just before the predicted rainstorm blew in from the west.
Boucher was a stand-in for Jody Petty, who rode McDynamo to the Eclipse Award last year. Petty never made it past the first jump, and this was a forecast of spills to come. Five jockeys went down at the hedges, worst day for such calamities in the history of Kingston. None suffered serious injuries, but Petty had to be transported to a hospital in Rome with cuts about the face.
That was the distressful side of the day. The bright side, under a gloomy, scowling overhead, was Jonathan Sheppard’s return to form at the acreage he loves. “See here,” he said, pointing to the standings of a season yet short, “I hadn’t won a race before.”
Now, he has and the form is back. So, call it Sheppard Downs.
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