AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2007 > October > 01
Monday, October 1, 2007
Lehtonen will start Opening Night
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well this is it. The final few days of practice until the regular season starts. The Thrashers wrapped up their exhibition season 5-2, but more important, they avoided any major crisis during training camp. (I’ll avoid the word injury for you superstitious fans out there) The biggest scare was Kari Lehtonen’s groin strain, and as we saw the final two games, shouldn’t be an issue.
Bob Hartley said this morning that Lehtonen will start the season opener on Friday night against the Caps, which isn’t surprising — but still, you never know - right? The lines during practice today were what we thought they’d be in the final exhibition game against Florida, until Todd White got sick. White was back at it today, although he said he was drained this weekend because of the flu.
It was a pretty intense practice, and there was a workout afterwards. Expect another strong practice on Tuesday, then it’ll lighten up as game day approaches.
As far as training camps go, it was a pretty successful one for the Thrashers. Holly Gunning as a good recap on Hockeysfuture.com, breaking down the rookies who made the team. About the only thing that didn’t get done was a Marian Hossa contract. GM Don Waddell met again with Hoss’ agent in Florida, but it doesn’t look like the two sides are closer. There’s no offer on the table, but really that’s because Hossa hasn’t given an indication that he’s ready to sign. There are a lot of reasons why this is a big season for the Thrashers, one of which is - it may take a good year to convince Marian to stay in Atlanta. And can you really blame him?
There is a team dinner on Tuesday, where the players will find out who the captain is. The team will let the fans know at a season ticket holder event at Philips in the evening. Of course Bob Hartley knows, but when I was bugging him about it today, he said I’d be better of bribing Joey Guilmet, one of the equipment managers, because he’s the one putting the ‘C’ on the jerseys. I’ll have it on here as soon as word gets out. I’ve already changed my mind three times on who I think it should be. I’ll say this — when I was doing the story from between the benches, I got a whole new perspective about the kind of leaders Slava Kozlov and Niclas Havelid are. They both come off as quiet, especially in the dressing room. Kozzie will crack jokes and things like that, but neither struck me as a vocal player. But on the bench during games, they’re both very vocal and instructive. In fact, outside Hartley, they are the voices I heard the most.
