AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2007 > September > 26
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Hartley happy with Little’s play
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
First, I just wanted to thank everyone for the feedback on the ‘Between the Benches’ story. I appreciate it. For those who wanted me to ignore Bobby Holik and give away team secrets, there really wasn’t anything crazy said while I was there. Just your usual in-game comments like “We need to talk more” or encouragement like “Atta boy Moose.”
Maybe when I left in the third period, all the nastiness came out. The only chirping back and forth between the two benches came when there was some yelling in the direction of Nashville’s Shea Weber. You have to remember, this was a preseason game, so it’s not like it was the first-round of the playoffs.
Speaking of which, the best anecdote from between the benches came from the September 4 issue of The Hockey News. Darren Pang told a story to THN about the trash talking between Sean Avery and Ilya Kovalchuk during the first round of the playoffs. After Kovalchuk turned the puck over, Avery shouted “That’s why you’ll never be a winner, Kovalchuk…You’re a greedy hockey player.”
Keith Tkachuk’s response shows why he was so well-liked in Atlanta. He said: “Ilya, don’t worry. We don’t have to kill him, his own teammates will.” It’s a great anecdote from an interesting story written by Mike Brophy in the Hockey News.
John Kincade had some great stories about his time between the benches while doing the games for SportSouth last year. He’s disappointed he won’t be doing it this year, and it’s easy to see why he’ll miss it. He told me about some of the confusion on the bench when the last game of the regular season went into overtime. The players started asking him if he knew who the Thrashers would play in the playoffs if they won or lost in overtime.
Here’s what Kincade said: “Bobby Holik started asking me questions during the timeout. ‘If we win this do we play Tampa or do we play the Rangers?’… Literally, Bobby Holik is like ‘What’s the situation, now?’ I’m like freaking out - Bob Hartley is going to throttle me if I don’t shut up. All I’m trying to do is comment on the play. When the players started engaging me in conversation, I was like ‘Hartley is going to literally kick my backside.’”
For those of you looking for some nuts and bolts breakdown of last night’s game, which obviously my story didn’t provide. Ben Wright did a nice job breaking it down on atlantathrashers.com.
I liked what I saw from the penalty killers. Pascal Dupuis and Jim Slater looked great together, it makes me wonder why Slates wasn’t used more on the penalty kill last season. Bob Hartley was really pleased with Bryan Little’s play, so if you’re looking for some idea of who is getting an inside track to one of the two open forward spots, that has to bode well for Little. Like I mentioned in the comments section of the last blog, if the shootout had gone any longer, Little was taking the fourth shot.
Defenseman Karel Pilar was cut this morning so the battle on the blueline is down to Tobias Enstrom (who apparently goes by the name Toby), Mark Popovic, Boris Valabik and Joel Kwiatkowski.
Lastly, if you were waiting for the Atlanta Thrashers Season Preview on SportSouth, it will air on Saturday at 10:30 p.m., so set your Tivos.
