Thrashers’ Crabb makes most of NHL debut

Joey Crabb made his NHL debut just over a week ago and hasn’t come out of the lineup in any of the four games since.

Crabb got his first NHL point Wednesday night with an assist on the Thrashers’ only goal at Ottawa. Still, the start of his career wasn’t the way he dreamed it would be when he was a kid in Anchorage, Alaska.

“The way we’ve been going so far, it really puts a damper on things,” Crabb said after the Ottawa game. “I think everybody pictures jumping on a team that wins all the time and goes to the Stanley Cup. That’s not the way it always works. Obviously, I’m not any less happy to be in the NHL. I’ve got a great team to play for. We’ve got a lot of skill and talent. We’ve got good guys in the locker room. We just need to put it all together. We’ve been struggling, but I think we have the guys in the locker room to do it.”

Boulton line producing

Eric Boulton, Jim Slater and Crabb produced the Thrashers’ one goal at Ottawa, and it was a pretty play across the ice from Slater to Crabb to Boulton. “The Boulton line was one of our best lines the other night,” Thrashers coach John Anderson said. “All they did was work hard and get in the face of people, and you saw the result.” Crabb has impressed Boulton. “He knows the game. He’s playing pretty gritty up here,” Boulton said. “We’re just trying to get a good forecheck, what the fourth line has to do, and we’ve been in the other team’s end, creating some havoc out there.”

Lehtonen, Schneider update

Goalie Kari Lehtonen, who last played in October, has been making progress recovering from a bad back. “We’re actually a little excited about it. It’s getting better than we anticipated,” Anderson said, but he added the team will be careful not to play Lehtonen before he’s ready. Defenseman Mathieu Schneider is expected back this week.