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Thursday, May 31, 2007
No offer coming for Tkachuk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Don Waddell confirmed what I suspected today, saying that the Thrashers won’t be offering forward Keith Tkachuk a contract before the July 1st deadline. After that the Thrashers lose exclusive negotiating rights to the big center who will be an unrestricted free agent. Even with that confirmation, Waddell said that he thought Tkachuk was a good fit in Atlanta and wasn’t against doing some negotiating after July 1st.
“I won’t rule anything out,” he said.
Waddell is leaving for Toronto today to meet with the agent of Andrei Zubarev to try and work out a deal for the Russian defenseman prospect. There’s less urgency there to make a deal since the team won’t lose Zubarev’s rights if the Thrashers can’t get a deal done and another year in Russia for Zubarev wouldn’t hurt the Thrashers.
The earliest the team will announce the signing of Tobias Enstrom is Friday morning because they are still officially waiting the fax of his contract. But there’s a lot of excitement about Enstrom’s possibilities with the team next year. Assuming the deal gets done, he’ll be in the top six.
“I’m excited about him,” Waddell said. “We need a puck moving defenseman. We need guys to move the puck to our forwards and not just move it around the boards.”
Some interesting stuff concerning Pavelec and his signing, but I’ll save that for my story for the paper.
Thrashers signing their draft picks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UPDATE: Alright, it’s official. The Thrashers will be announcing later today that they have signed goalie Ondrej Pavelec, defenseman Chad Denny, forward Tomas Pospisil and forward Myles Stoesz.
I’m still awaiting confirmation on Tobias Enstrom, but his current team in the Swedish Elite League is confirming reports from a Swedish newspaper that he has signed with the Thrashers. They may have agreed to terms, and may still be hammering out final details.
I’m not hearing anything on Ilya Nikulin and Andrei Zubarev, but since Russia didn’t sign the agreement with the IIHF there isn’t the pressure to get things wrapped up by 5 p.m. on Friday.
Along these lines, I wanted to point out an interesting Q and A with Thrashers’ Director of Amateur Scouting and Player Development Dan Marr done by Ben Wright at atlantathrashers.com. Highlights include:
- Despite not picking until the third round in the upcoming draft, Marr is confident that if there’s a player the Thrashers like, Waddell will make a deal to go up and get him.
- Riley Holzapfel, a second-rounder in 2006, has impressed the team.
- Andrei Zubarev plays a heck of a lot like Alexei Zhitnik
