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Monday, November 19, 2007
Lecavalier vs. Kovalchuk - who’s better?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pat Burns recently said that if he was starting an NHL team and had the first pick of any player, he’d take Vincent Lecavalier. Alex Ovechkin told me if he could hand-pick any player as a teammate, it’d be Ilya Kovalchuk. It’s safe to say those two are the hottest two players in the NHL right now. Lecavalier is on a seven-game point streak, and all of them are multi-point games (a franchise record). The last NHL player to do that is Mario Lemieux. He has six goals and 19 points in his last seven games. The trio of Lecavalier, St. Louis and Prospal has 80 points - the most of any trio in the league.
But we know how well Kovalchuk has been going. In three games against the Lightning, Kovy has five points (four goals, one assist). He has 15 points in his last seven games and leads the NHL in goals with 16. He almost single-handedly carried the Thrashers out of their brutal start, and hasn’t slowed down since his teammates have picked up the slack.
So take off your Thrashers blinders for a second, and answer honestly. Who would you pick first right now to start a team. Lecavalier or Kovalchuk. And defend your answer.
Morning skate report: No changes from last game. Moose in goal. That was easy, right?
Questions for Hoss: One of the fun parts about my job is that I can satisfy my own curiosity about things about the game by going right to the source. Since I didn’t do the Carolina game, I didn’t have a chance to ask Hossa if he banked that game-tying goal against Florida off Jay Bouwmeester’s skate on purpose (you remember, the one with two seconds left last week). He said it was an accident. Kind of. He faked the shot on Vokoun and realized that if he shot the puck, Vokoun was in position to make the save. He also knew a teammate was coming hard on the other side, so he tried sliding the puck across the crease to a teammate and it hit Bouwmeester’s skate and the rest is history. He said Bouwmeester was coming in too fast for him to try and hit a skate on purpose. But he also said that he does use the opposition for deflections that are sometime viewed as lucky bounces. He said, particularly during 5-on-3s, when defensemen retreat too far back, he’ll use them for a redirect. But that wasn’t the case against Florida. But man, talk about patience. There’s 2 seconds left, and he’s still making the absolute right decision. Good stuff.
Rehab for Kari?: Don Waddell still hasn’t ruled out a rehab stint in Chicago for Kari Lehtonen, but he did say that the goalie would have to approve any rehab assignment. In talking to Kari yesterday, it didn’t seem like he thought a rehab trip would be necessary so we’ll see.
