THRASHERS 5, PANTHERS 3: Kovalchuk gets two goals, assist

It has been one of the biggest questions of the Thrashers’ season. It was one of the biggest questions of the first 10 minutes Sunday.

Where was Ilya Kovalchuk?

The Thrashers’ biggest star hadn’t seemed himself through the team’s first 11 games, and then he literally disappeared from the ice and the bench in the early going against Florida.

Pulled muscle, his coach said. Skate needed sharpening, Kovalchuk said.

Whatever it was, consider it fixed. For two and a half periods it was just Kovy being Kovy. He scored two goals and assisted on another in a 5-3 victory at Philips Arena.

“It seems like when I score we win,” Kovalchuk said after the Thrashers snapped a six-game winless streak.

Kovalchuk said Sunday’s game is just a start. Opponents have scored three more even-strength goals than the Thrashers when Kovalchuk is on the ice.

“I have to play much, much better,” he said. “When you’re minus-three, you can’t make the playoffs when you’re a minus player.”

He was a huge positive against Florida.

He scored his first goal from just in front of the crease off a dart of a five-foot pass from Erik Christensen.

He scored his second while falling to the ice, somehow managing to get his stick on the puck and shoot over Tomas Vokoun. Thrashers goalie Ondrej Pavelec predicted it will be a TV highlight this week and beyond. “It was like the [Alex] Ovechkin goal,” Pavelec said, speaking of a 2006 goal that has been viewed on YouTube more than 500,000 times.

The season-low crowd of 10,584 waved their free Blueland flags in appreciation of the team’s No. 1 attraction. A weekend rumor out of Montreal that the Canadiens had contacted the Thrashers about acquiring Kovalchuk?

“No truth to it,” Thrashers general manager Don Waddell said. “There was the same thing out of Toronto [on Saturday]. I haven’t talked to anybody, nor do I have any plans to talk to anybody. You see games like tonight’s, he’s a game breaker for you. He’s not going anywhere.”

Kovalchuk has five goals in 12 games this season, but he doesn’t have the team lead.

That’s shared by Slava Kozlov and Bryan Little, both of whom scored Sundayt. Todd White scored the other Atlanta goal.

The Thrashers badly needed something good to happen after 7-0 and 6-1 blowout losses in the previous five days. They’re still second to last in the Eastern Conference.

“We’re much, much better than that,” Kovalchuk said. “I promise we’re going to be in way better shape than we are right now.”

The Thrashers outshot an opponent for the second time all season (31-21) and set a season best for fewest shots allowed. Those statistics don’t even begin to reveal the imbalance in scoring chances.

“If we’d had a little bit of a touch around the net, it could have been a lot more goals,” Thrashers coach John Anderson said.

But the Thrashers didn’t need more goals. What they needed, more than anything, was a victory.

“Tonight for me was like winning a playoff game,” Anderson said.

“I felt just as nervous and as anxious as [an AHL Calder Cup playoffs] Game 7 that we’ve played in years past.”