Niclas Lucenius won't leave Georgia empty-handed.

He'll take Hollister, American Eagle and Abercrombie and Fitch clothes to his fashion-conscious girlfriend when he goes home to Finland on Tuesday. Some things, it seems, you just can't find everywhere. Make that a lot of things.

Jason Getz/jgetz@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Nicklas Lasu of Sweden was a fifth-round draft choice by the Atlanta Thrashers.

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"I might have to buy another bag," Lucenius said.

He won't need a suitcase, though, to carry home the stuff he picked up over the last six days at the Thrashers' prospect development camp. The team brought Lucenius and two other players from Europe to give them experiences that might ease their eventual transition into the NHL in two or three years.

Lucenius, fellow Finn Jonas Enlund and Nicklas Lasu of Sweden were drafted by the Thrashers but don't play for a Thrashers affiliate. The three forwards have their own European teams, their own European contracts and very little connection to the Atlanta team that owns their NHL rights. The development camp gave the Thrashers a chance to learn more about them and gave them a chance to learn more about the Thrashers ... and the United States.

Lucenius, who spent his ninth-grade year in Pennsylvania as an exchange student, got to catch up on the American things he has missed, like bagels, root beer and Post Honey Bunches of Oats cereal.

Lasu had never been to the United States before; Enlund had taken brief hockey trips to Lake Placid, N.Y., and Chicago.

The Thrashers coaches don't speak Swedish or Finnish, and there were no translators. It was up to the players to figure out what they were supposed to do.

"Enlund, I didn't know he didn't speak English," Thrashers coach John Anderson said while describing a drill at the beginning of camp where the player went the wrong direction. "I'm screaming at him. He's looking at me like a deer in the headlights. I felt bad for the kid afterward."

After that, Anderson made it a point to do three things: Diagram as much as possible on a whiteboard, tell Enland to ask questions if he didn't understand something and encourage Enland to get help from his teammates.

More often than not, that help came from Lucenius, who played for the same Finnish team as Enland last season.

In baseball, most players go from the draft to the minor leagues, where they play alongside other prospects affiliated with the same major league organization and learn full-time from that organization's staff. In basketball and football, most players go straight from the draft to the team's roster. Hockey is a lot different.

Most of the Thrashers' North American draftees go to college or junior hockey before moving on to the minor leagues or the NHL roster. Europeans usually play professionally in their home countries before shifting to North America.

So for all 32 participants the prospect camp served as an introduction to and indoctrination in the ways of the organization. Anderson taught them his way to play hockey, from how to get the puck through the neutral zone to what to do on the attacking end. Each player got a single 8-1/2-by-11 sheet of paper with bullet points reminding them of the habits the Thrashers would like them to maintain while they're playing for a team beyond the Thrashers' control.

"Back check hard through the middle" and "head on a swivel" were two of the bullet points for forwards. "Good gaps," "good first pass" and "shoot the puck" were bullet points for defensemen.

For the players, ages 17-23, it was like a one-week crash course. For Enlund and Lasu, it was a crash course delivered in a strange language and in an unfamiliar time zone. Jet lag had Lasu falling asleep in the team hotel at 8 p.m. and waking up before 5 a.m.

Despite that, Lasu said, he was able to understand what his coaches told him.

"I almost get everything," he said. "If I don't get everything, I ask one of the guys."