AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2007 > September > 18
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Heading out of Hockeyville
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Toronto — All in all, a successful road trip for the Thrashers to open the exhibition season. You had to like what you saw from the Kovalchuk-White-Sterling line. I’ll give Brett Sterling credit, he was looking for his shot. It’s obvious he doesn’t need too many scoring chances to put points on the board. After the game, Bob Hartley commented that Sterlilng was born with an ability to score goals. You can’t teach that. He’s also a physical player for his size, he wasn’t pushed around out there. White looked good in his first game with the Thrashers. He almost scored a short-handed goal, creating a turnover while logging minutes on the PK and forced Joey MacDonald to make a nice save.
In the early auditions for the spot on Kovalchuk’s line, Sterling retained his position as the favorite to end up in that spot. In Bryan Little’s preseason debut, he was mostly skating with the younger guys, so it was hard to get a feel for his game. He looked fairly comfortable out there and I like how he pressured the puck. I’m curious to see how he’d look if he was given an extended chance to play with a couple veterans, but he’s going to have to earn it.
In our quest to predict the captain, the following players wore an ‘A’ last night: Ilya Kovalchuk, Todd White and Garnet Exelby. I’m in the camp that thinks Kovalchuk should get an A this season.
For those who were pleased with the small number of shots on Pavelec in game one, that number grew last night. Johan Hedberg faced 29 shots in a solid season debut for the veteran.
If you want to read more on the whole Hockeyville experience, Evan Grossman has a good story on NHL.com.
Other stuff I’m reading while waiting for my flight back to Atlanta:
