AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2008 > October > 10
Friday, October 10, 2008
Let the season begin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Went to my first morning skate of the regular season. First things first. Bryan Little will play tonight. The lines and pairings are exactly what they were in practice on Thursday. Brett Sterling and Nathan Oystrick are scratches, with Mike Hoffman on the injured list and, Dan Kamal tells me, making an appearance as the radio color man. Can you get AM 680 reception inside Philips? It might be fun to hear it tonight.
Here’s two little tidbits that didn’t fit in today’s story about Ilya Kovalchuk. One, he has an unofficial reserved parking space. Other guys park head in or back-end in, but Kovalchuk has a space where he can park parallel to the building, in a way that the car won’t get scratched by someone else getting careless while opening a car door. Can’t say I blame him, with those wheels. Two, I asked him how he decides whether to drive the Mercedes or the Bentley. Whichever one has more gas in the tank, he told me. I laughed. He said he was serious. The recent gas shortage made no exceptions for hockey players, even ones who scored 52 goals last season. The good thing about it, Kovalchuk said, was that it cut down on traffic.
John Anderson and Bruce Boudreau exchanged a hug and some conversation during the Thrashers warm-ups. Anderson struck me as both excited and maybe a tad more nervous than on a regular day. Of course, he may be like that on every game day; I have nothing with which to compare it.
Drop that puck.
