It’s also been a rough start for the Chicago Wolves in the Western Conference finals of the AHL’s Calder Cup playoffs. They lost in overtime for the second straight game on Sunday. The Wolves head to Hamilton for three straight games in an attempt to get back in the series.

So why should you care about the Wolves playoff run? It’s all about player development for the Thrashers. Take forward Jordan LaVallee, who many think might be a darkhorse to make the Thrashers next season. He scored his sixth goal of the AHL postseason on Sunday. Now for a guy who just turned 21 this month, that’s invaluable game experience — playoff experience at that.

It’s kind of like in college football, the big advantage schools who make a bowl game have over schools who don’t. Those programs have a ton of extra practice time for underclassmen - and that’s what is happening in Chicago right now.

We’ll be featuring big 6-foot-7 defenseman Boris Valabik in Tuesday’s paper. Unfortunately for the Wolves and Thrashers, Valabik hasn’t been able to capitalize on the AHL playoff run recently. He has missed the first two games of the conference finals, and I just spoke with Wolves coach John Anderson who said it was because of an injury. Anderson declined to elaborate on the injury, understandably so, considering Valabik still might be able to go at some point this series and he’s not interested in giving Hamilton any extra info. When I was in Chicago, Valabik said his ankle was 100 percent, so I don’t know if it is flaring up again or not.

Bryan Little also sat on Sunday, as Ben Wright pointed out on his blog at AtlantaThrashers.com. Little’s sitting has everything to do with the fact that he isn’t exactly in AHL game shape, while others on the team are. The Wolves have liked what they’ve seen from Little in his two games he’s played for them, but feel that they might get a little more production from other players on the team.

Other than that, things are pretty quiet right now. Those of you worried about the fact that the Thrashers haven’t signed any of their UFA’s yet (and that means you Brendan), I wouldn’t be too concerned. It’s not like a ton of guys are being signed, and the price of Pascal Dupuis is going through the roof. I know Don is working on signing guys like Chad Denny and Ondrej Pavelec, but he’s not ignoring his UFAs. As he said, “we can multitask.”

Finally, I’ll leave you with this. I was chatting today with somebody outside the organization who knows Waddell pretty well, and I asked about the criticisms we sometimes hear about the Thrashers lack of success building through the draft. Here was his response:

“That’s a crock of [bleep]. Don’s a brilliant GM. Look at Heatley, Kovalchuk, and that’s a pretty good goalie he drafted.”

As for the lack of late round picks on the current roster?

“Look at the number of those guys who do turn out [for any team], there’s just not that many.”

He also pointed out that there are a couple late-round picks on the verge of contributing to the Thrashers, most-likely next season. So there you go, thought I’d throw that into the fire.

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