Thrashers co-owner praises Anderson for ‘terrific job’

Thrashers co-owner Bruce Levenson represents the Atlanta Spirit Group on the NHL’s board of governors. He recently spoke with Thrashers beat writer Mike Knobler about the team’s past, present and future. Here are the highlights:

Q. What do you do with ticket prices going forward in this economy?

A. We’re holding the line for next year. We’re creating a host of value opportunities. … We’ve got to deliver value in order to bring people back.

Q. When you do discounting later in the season, and you’ve got people who got in at the start, loyal season ticket holders, how do you deal with the tension there?

A. We learned our lesson on that. I learned it the hard way. The season ticket holders were vocal about it. … When we give a military person or a student or a young child a break on a ticket, I think our season ticket holders understand what we’re doing. What they got really annoyed about, and I think rightfully so, was when they have an adult sitting next to them that looked like them and acted like them and had paid less for a ticket.

Q. What other things have you learned? What mistakes have you made and things have you corrected?

A. The other big mistake is maybe trying to go too fast in building a winner here. I think we made the same mistake every new owner makes in that regard. … We were worried that in non-traditional hockey markets that it would be a lot harder coming out of the lockout to bring back the fans than it was in traditional hockey markets. We felt the best way to do that was to jump-start the on-ice [performance]. … We made some deals I’d love to have back. I was a part of those deals, and I was certainly anxious to get us moving in the right direction, probably overly anxious. It did bring us a division championship. It did bring us our first playoffs. But we didn’t have the foundation under that. We just didn’t have all the right parts there to sustain it.

Q. You’re talking about trading Braydon Coburn for Alexei Zhitnik?

A. I’m never going to mention names. … I’m not going to sit here and denigrate a player in the media, but I will say we made some mistakes that brought us some very brief short-term gains but cost us long-term, and I think the fans probably figured that out before I did.

Q. So Don [Waddell] will be your GM going forward next year?

A. I never play that game. Every GM and every coach in professional sports is on a day-to-day contract. But I have a lot of respect for Don. We have a great working relationship. I’m very excited about the prospects for a young team that has gotten even younger in the past couple of weeks.

Q. What about John Anderson’s first year as coach?

A. I think John has done a terrific job under very difficult circumstances this year.

Q. Your salaries this year were only a few million dollars above the floor for the league. Is that where you project being next year?

A. Going into the year, I think we’re going to be fiscally prudent with regard to salaries. I think you’ll see most teams be fiscally prudent because of the uncertainties of the economy. Just as we have done in past years, including right before this season, if there are opportunities that we think justify us increasing our spending, we’ll do that.

Q. One expensive item you’ve got coming up is trying to keep Ilya Kovalchuk here. How much can you throw at that situation?

A. We’re going to do whatever it takes to keep Ilya here. Just look at his leadership since they put that [captain’s] “C” on his jersey, you understand how valuable he is. We really need to build this team around Ilya. As he goes, so go the Thrashers.

Q. Is Kari Lehtonen your goalie of the future?

A. Kari’s been great for us, absolutely great. The short answer to that is, “Yes.” The longer answer is we have some tough decisions to make because we’ve got a terrific young goalie in Chicago. [Ondrej Pavelec] is really something special.

Q. How does the end of [the lawsuit against co-owner Steve Belkin] affect the Thrashers?

A. The lawsuit is about buying out a partner. There will be an end to that process, and there will be a buying out of that partner. We have begun to have conversations with people about the possibility of them coming into our group and buying out that interest. That may or may not happen.

Q. People talk about the Thrashers being in Hamilton or someplace else, could that happen?

A. Absolutely not. I haven’t heard that talk. Maybe I’ve been busy with a court case. I certainly haven’t been part of any conversation about that.