DEL.ICIO.USThrashers outscored by Wild
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
If Atlanta’s NHL team lost in regulation for the first time this season and nobody came to see it, did it make a noise?
The muffled thud emerging from Philips Arena on Tuesday night was the sound of the Thrashers falling back to the ice after a 1-0-1 season-opening weekend.
Rich Addicks/raddicks@ajc.com
Bryan Little brought the Thrashers within one goal with less than 5 minutes to go in the final period. It was his third goal of the season.
Rich Addicks/raddicks@ajc.com
Thrashers goalie Kari Lehtonen swats away the puck after allowing a breakaway goal to Minnesota Wild right wing Antti Miettinen in final period. Lehtonen made 22 saves on the night.
They lost 4-2 to the Minnesota Wild before a crowd announced at 11,843 but probably was closer to half that size when you account for the no-shows. It was the first time since March 2004 the Thrashers announced a home crowd smaller than 12,000.
The fans who came saw the Thrashers play evenly with the defending Northwest Division champions through two periods but fall apart in the third, when the Wild scored three goals on five shots.
The go-ahead goal came 2:44 into the period, when Mathieu Schneider had the puck just outside Kari Lehtonen’s crease. Minnesota’s Marian Gaborik lifted Schneider’s stick and knocked the puck home.
“Normally, I put that back into Kari, but Kari lost his stick,” Schneider said. “[Gaborik] made a nice play. I’d normally put it right back in a goalie’s pads, but without his stick that becomes pretty risky, too. Obviously, you don’t want to handle the puck in front of your net, but I didn’t have a lot of choice there.”
Seven minutes later, with the Thrashers applying pressure, Nathan Oystrick leaped to try to catch the puck to keep it in the attacking zone. It went over his glove, and Antti Miettinen sped past for a breakaway, which he converted.
“I got a glove on it. I tried catching it and bringing it down, but maybe I should have just batted it away,” Oystrick said. “I came down and fell, and with my luck, he put it in.”
It was tough timing for Oystrick, who was making his NHL debut.
“Mistakes happen,” he said. “I’ve just got to learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“I don’t think it was his fault,” Thrashers coach John Anderson said. “He had no chance to get it. That was just one play. What are you going to do?”
Bryan Little pulled the Thrashers back within a goal by deflecting home a crossing pass from Todd White at the 15:20 mark, but Miettinen scored again, this time on a two-on-one, to end the home team’s hopes.
The Wild were playing at less than full strength. Center Pierre-Marc Bouchard was out with a back injury, and wing Owen Nolan left Tuesday night’s game with a lower body injury.
But Minnesota had enough to counter Atlanta, especially when the Thrashers had a man advantage. Atlanta was 0-for-4 on the power play. Anderson termed the power play “horrible.”
Former Thrashers player Andrew Brunette scored the game’s first goal. Ilya Kovalchuk tied it with his first goal of the season, on a cross from new linemate Little. That was one of few Atlanta highlights on a night when Anderson saw his team take a step backward.
“We have things that we want to do as a team, and when we get under a little bit of pressure, then you tend to do your own thing,” Anderson said. “That’s part of learning. You can’t do that. You’ve got to stay with what we want to do. If one guy’s doing something different, guess what? It doesn’t happen. We look all discombobulated.”
Perhaps it’s fortunate there weren’t many people around to see it.
Services »
