Thrashers snap skid with shootout win

By Chris Vivlamore

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Finally, John Anderson can smile.

“It took me 10 games to get here,” the Thrashers coach said after his team snapped a nine-game losing streak with a 2-1 shootout win over the New York Rangers on Thursday.

Slava Kozlov and Bryan Little scored for the Thrashers in a five-round shootout for the team’s first win since Dec. 17. Goaltender Johan Hedberg stopped four of five shots in the shootout to improve to 4-1 on the season in the tiebreaker.

“I wasn’t really expecting to shoot, but it went to me,” said Little, the fifth shooter. “I didn’t really plan ahead. I saw that a couple of five-hole goals beat [Rangers goaltender Chad Johnson], so I decided to shoot there before I even went. You don’t usually expect it to go past three or four guys. I was just happy to contribute to the win tonight.”

Kozlov scored as the second shooter. He now has 27 goals in 46 shootout chances, a 59 percent success rate.

The Thrashers improved to 19-18-6 (44 points) with the win after going 0-6-3 in their past nine games. They are tied for 10th in the Eastern Conference standings, three points out of the eighth spot. Still, the Thrashers have gone 19 games without a regulation win, the last coming Nov. 30.

It was a missed shot by Jim Slater that enabled the Thrashers to find a weakness in Johnson, making his second NHL appearance and first career start.

Slater missed a breakaway in the first period, but a video session during the intermission gave the Thrashers a big clue.

“What happened was on Jimmy Slater’s first breakaway, we looked at the tape, and [assistant coach] Steve Weeks said ‘I think I see five-hole there.’ It’s a goalie you don’t know, and he played excellent. That’s maybe why, but you still have to make your shot.”

It was Slater who scored 6:06 into the third period, beating Johnson with a shot that went between his legs, to tie the game at 1-1.

Slater took a pass from Pavel Kubina at the blue line and skated in on Johnson. He made a move to expose the goaltender and slid the puck into the back of the net for his third goal in the past two games. Eric Boulton also got an assist on the play.

“In the second period I had a breakaway, too, but I didn’t [shoot] high enough,” Slater said. “Coach was saying go five-hole on this guy, he’s a big guy. [Kubina] made a great pass there in the middle. I beat my guy in the middle and came in and tried to open him up five-hole and slid it in there. Even in the shootout, [Kozlov] and [Little] had five-hole goals. Coach was right.”

Hedberg stopped 29 of 30 shots to beat the Rangers for the third time this season. He improved to 10-6-3 on the season with a .916 save percentage.

“We deserved this win,” Hedberg said. “We have been working for it for a long time now.”

Hedberg stopped shootout attempts by former Thrasher Erik Christensen, Ryan Callahan, Ales Kotalik and Michael Del Zotto. Only Marian Gaborik, the NHL’s leading goal scorer, got the puck past Hedberg.

The Rangers scored first on Enver Lisin’s second-period goal. The Thrashers had just killed off a holding penalty on Evander Kane and sent the puck deep in the Rangers’ end. Johnson took control of the puck and passed it to Marc Staal, who sped up the right side of the ice.

Staal sent the puck toward the net. Just the Thrashers’ luck, the puck went between the legs of Kubina and onto Lisin’s stick. He directed the puck past Hedberg for his fifth goal of the season, 2:49 into the period. Johnson was credited with an assist along with Staal.

“We kept it simple tonight,” Thrashers defenseman Zach Bogosian said. “We need to make sure we get back to what made us a good hockey team at the start of the year. We were playing well as a team and I feel like we did that tonight.”

The win started a four-game homestand for the Thrashers after a seven-game road trip ended a brutal stretch of schedule where the team played 13 of 17 games on the road.

“I put my red slippers on and clicked my heels three times and said ‘There’s no place like home,’ ” Anderson said.