AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2007 > November > 29
Thursday, November 29, 2007
In search of secondary scoring
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just like we speculated yesterday in the blog, Don Waddell is shaking the secondary lines up a little bit for tonight’s game. Darren Haydar is in and will play with Bryan Little and Eric Perrin. That means Slava Kozlov will play on the Bobby Holik line. Larsen and McCarthy are sitting. So which one is the second and which one is the third line? The move balances out the scoring, but you lose a little defensively when you swap Larsen for Kozlov. Kozzy and Holik seemed to have pretty good chemestry when they played together earlier, so it could be a good move. I predict a Slava Kozlov goal tonight - you heard it here first. And if he doesn’t, I’m just going to go into the blog software and delete this sentence. The bottom line is this: The Thrashers can’t depend on Kovalchuk and Hossa to do all their scoring. They’re going to need better offensive production from the other lines, so maybe this is the first step toward achieving that.
Johan Hedberg in goal, which means Moose and Kari Lehtonen will be playing at the same time tonight. So pick a side — who lets in fewer goals tonight - Kari or Moose. Obviously Kari has the advantage of not facing the Toronto Maple Leafs, or maybe that’s not an advantage. I don’t know.
As we speak, Bruce Levenson is either playing golf in Pebble Beach or voting at the board of governors in California. It depends on when you read this. Don Waddell said he backed Brian Burke in his proposal to allow teams the ability to eat salary in trades. I asked him if he thought it gave a competitive advantage to bigger market teams like Toronto and New York, and he said they can just stash players in the minors anyway to clear cap room, so this way those players can stay in the league. This is the first board of governors meeting that Waddell has missed.
Anybody see Braydon Coburn’s contract extension? Good for him, seems like he’s doing well in Philly. I think it’s safe to say that trade isn’t working out right now for the Thrashers.
I hear the calls starting to come for the next huge Thrashers defensive prospect, Boris Valabik. I asked Don this morning who would be the next defenseman called up if the Thrashers needed help on the blueline, but he wasn’t tipping his hand. He mentioned the solid play of veteran Joel Kwiatkowski but also said he liked what he saw from Valabik when he was in Chicago to see Lehtonen play the other night. In her most recent breakdown of the players in Chicago, Holly Gunning at Hockey’s Future pointed out that Valabik is battling ankle injuries again, although it wasn’t the same ankle that cause him to miss time at the end of last season. There’s also a great quote from John Anderson about Brett Sterling inside that story that the AJC censors wouldn’t allow through.
