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Tuesday, January 1, 2008
McCrimmon promoted; Moose up next
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Happy New Year’s everybody. Hope you’re having as good a start to 2008 as Brad McCrimmon who was just promoted to associate coach of the Thrashers. It’s a deserved promotion for a guy who has really elevated his stature with the organization since Bob Hartley was fired. He typically runs practices when Don Waddell can’t make it and now gets the title to go along with the responsibilities.
So how does this change things? From the fans’ perspective, probably not that much. It does mean that McCrimmon will have to deal with the media when Don’s not around (sorry Beast) so that should be fun. It’ll be good to get another voice in the mix. I think the most important thing to come out of this is the fact that this clearly makes McCrimmon the front-runner to be the head coach when the search opens up, most likely, in the summer. Now if the Thrashers completely collapse and ownership cleans house, that won’t bode well for McCrimmon. But if the Thrashers can start winning with a little more consistency, make the playoffs and go from there, then McCrimmon would be the obvious choice to coach the team next season. Waddell has made it clear that he has no intentions of coaching beyond this season.
As for on the ice developments, Johan Hedberg will start in goal against Carolina on Wednesday. He’s had success there and Kari Lehtonen wasn’t exactly stellar in Boston. At some point Waddell will have to settle on a good ratio of games between the two goalies. I don’t imagine it’ll be a strict rotation, but I don’t think an 8 to 1 ratio will be the answer either. We’ll see.
Jim Slater is still probably a week away, so that means Colin Stuart gets an extended look on that third line which has played really well since Stuart came aboard. That’s some good speed on the wings with Stuart and Pascal Dupuis and Waddell said if Stuart continues to play as well as he has, he’ll keep him on the team when Slater returns.
