AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2007 > July > 02
Monday, July 2, 2007
Klee signs, Kozlov waits
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Besides the Kozlov family, I’ll be the happiest one around when Slava finally signs. With anybody. The wait is killing me. I’ve been stalking his agent for the last week, heard “Under the Bridge” (Kozlov’s reverse ringtone) more times in the last few days than I did my entire freshman year in high school and have run out of ways of asking Don Waddell if anything is close.
Ken Klee? Now that guy knows how to get a contract done. Gets an offer from the Thrashers and a half hour later he accepts. I didn’t have a lot of room to get into Ken Klee in Tuesday’s story in the paper, so we’ll do it here on the blog.
It’s a two-year deal, worth a total of $2.5 million. Basically, he’ll play the veteran d-man role played by Greg de Vries last year. Since he was kind enough to chat for a few minutes after getting the deal done, and I couldn’t use any of it in the paper, here are a couple comments from Ken Klee.
Klee on finally signing with Thrashers, after rebuffing them in the past:
“They’ve shown interest in me whenever my contract has been up. They’re an up and coming team with a lot of young, talent guys. I’m excited.
Klee on mentoring some of the Thrashers young defensmen:
“You can never get too high or too low to play an 82-game schedule. You can’t be teetering on a bad play, you have to get right back out there. That’s something I learned over time and brought that to the young D here in Colorado and I’ll bring that to Atlanta.
Klee on his role with the Thrashers.
“I see myself in regular defensive role, more of a stabilizing factor. I try to put pressure on myself to be the player you can count on in the last two minutes. [I’m a] solid two-way player, can play a little power play, penalty kill but always think defense first.”
The Klee signing was pretty much summed up by one Avalanche insider: “He’s a ham and egg defenseman. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now back to Kozlov. Bertuzzi signing with Anaheim is an interesting development in that if the Wings got Bertuzzi done at a decent price, they probably wouldn’t have a need for Kozlov. Now suddenly the Red Wings might be back in the picture. Dallas also remains a team closely connected to the Kozlov negotiations. If the price is right, teams like Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Ottawa might be interested, but not for anything in the Kariya, Nylander price range.
Klee’s signing has no impact on Kozlov negotiations other than perhaps enticing him to stay if he feels like Klee is a defenseman who can get him the puck.
