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Not a lot to say about last night’s loss to the Sharks. The game was earily similar to the loss to Washington, with both goals including a three goal deficit, a two-goal rally following a goaltening change, a poor start, and a strong third period.
The obvious big difference is that the captain left one game healthy and left the other injured, and were all waiting to see how serious his injury is. According to John Anderson he’ll be checked out by doctors tomorrow morning. The good news is that of the injury is minor he has some time to heal before the team plays again on Thursday.
My recap from the game, including links to the press conference, photo gallery, and the in-arena Halloween video, is right here. If you haven’t read it it’s worth your time if for nothing more than the Ron Hainsey quotes at the end.
I’m not too concerned with the three losses since the team looked like it could hve won both games. This next stretch will be a test though, as just nine games into the season the Thrashers face three teams they’ve already played (and lost to) in Washington, Ottawa, and Montreal. How they respond in those rematched (possibly without Ilya Kovalchuk) will be a real measuing stick where they’re at.
Feel free to stop by tonight’s liveblog on CoverItLive.
Johan Hedberg gets the start in goal tonight as the Thrashers take on the San Jose Sharks at Philips Arena. Hedberg has been a rock when called up on this season, as his perfect record and .964 save percentage show. He says that the key for him this season is to act as if every day is a game day and to have the same attitude whether he’s playing or not.
Said Colby Armstrong about what Hedberg has brought to the table, “So far he’s been great. When he’s been called upon he’s been standing on his head. Every time he’s in there he’s competing hard. He’s a veteran guy and he’s real intense. He’s always talking on the ice. That makes it really easy for us.”
Asked about the decision to go with Hedberg rather than put Pavelec back in after his rough outing against Washington on Thursday in which he let in a shot from about 150 feet, Anderson was clear.
“Moose played a great game the other night in Buffalo,” he said. “Pavs had, I’m not going to say a bad game, but, that was a devastating goal. We don’t blame him for the loss or anything like that, but we want to make sure he gets his legs back under him before we throw him back into the fire.”
While some fans might be concerned about Pavelec’s mental state and whether he needs to get right back into action to get over the tough loss, Anderson isn’t worried. He had Pavelec in Chicago and won a championship with him. Anderson knows Pavelec as well as anyone and can certainly be trusted to do what’s best for his young netminder and his team.
The other change in the lineup will be Anssi Salmela coming in for Mark Popovic who is a scratch along with Jim Slater. Otherwise the lines are the same as on Thursday.
I spoke t a few players about the team approaches preparing for a Western Conference team that they don’t face very often. Both Todd White and Zach Bogosian said there’s more emphasis on video sessions breaking down the opposition’s tendencies. The players face a team like Washington often enough to know what’s in store, but without video they wouldn’t know what to expect from the Sharks. there’s a fine line to walk between countering what the visitors are doing and playing your own game, and Todd White said the plan will definitely be to keep doing what they’ve been doing when they’ve been successful while also being aware of what the Sharks like to do.
John Anderson pointed out that both teams are in the same situation since the Sharks obviously don’t play the East any more than the East plays the Sharks. He did point out that the Sharks might have a bit of a leg up since one of their assistant coaches, Matt Shaw, was his assistant coach for two seasons in Quad City and Chicago. That was back in the mid 90s though, so the strategies Anderson uses from those years might not be fresh in his memory.
Like Thursday night against the Capitals, the team sees tonight’s game as a test to see how they stack up against an elite squad and the emphasis in practice has been on playing a full 60 minutes.
“We’ve just got to play three solid periods of hockey to win hockey games,” said Zach Bogosian. “We can’t show up in the third period every game. Tonight’s obviously going to be a good test for us. They have a lot of good players. It’s been said by the coaching staff and by players in the room that we all have to play for three solid periods.”
Tonight’s game will be Dany Heatley’s first as a Shark in Atlanta. Heatley has 16 points in 16 games versus the Thrashers since being traded in the summer of 2005 but in eight games at Philips Arena he has just five points and is -4. He and Joe Thornton have been on a tear though, so keep an eye on him tonight.
Here are the expected lines for the Sharks:
Heatley- Thornton- Vesce
Clowe- Marelau- Setoguchi
Ortemeyer- Malholtra- Ferriero
Shelley- Nichol- Staubitz
Blake- Vlasic
Murray- Boyle
Huskins- Demers
There’s a chance we’ll see Greiss in goal instead of Nabokov.
Today is Thrashers blogger day at Philips Arena, so make sure you check out your favorite Thrashers blogs later tonight for bonus coverage.
Let’s take a look at some early season Thrashers rankings, shall we? Some of them are surprisingly different from past seasons, some are flat out impressive, and some ore kind of strange:
- PK- 1st in the NHL (90.6%)
- PP- tied for 1st in the NHL (28.6%)
- Goals Against Per Game: 7th (2.71)
- Goals Scored Per Game- 5th (3.57)
- Shots Per Game- 29th (24.7)
- Shots Against Per Game- 28th (34.1)
- Faceoff Percentage- 7th (51.5%)
It’s actually pretty incredible that the Thrashers are scoring as much as they are based on the number of shots they’re taking per game. You have to wonder if they’re lucky or just very particular about when they shoot. Ilya Kovalchuk has told media that he doesn’t shoot unless he thinks it’s a good chance. The Thrashers rank third in the NHL in team shooting percentage at 14.5%. They were also third last year, but at 10.8% when the top team in the league (Boston) was at 10.9%. If the Thrashers are going to keep up their scoring rate they’re probably going to have shoot significantly more, because that shooting percentage is likely to come down.
Have any other stats jumped out at you so far this season?
A game in which the Thrashers easily could have folded after 40 minutes turned into an exciting finish tonight at Philips as Zach Bogosian and Ilya Kovalchuk turned a 5-2 third-period deficit into an exciting 5-4 finish. In the locker room the positives from that finish seemed to outweigh any negatives from earlier in the game (like bad bounces and shaky netminding for a very brief span) as the players and head coach seemed okay with the overall effort. Nobody (Except perhaps Pavelec) was beating themselves up for the loss, which was refreshing to see.
Good teams get over mistakes and losses and move on. Teams that struggle dwell on them, and that’s what some Thrashers teams of the past have done.
I like the odds of this team bouncing back on Saturday versus the road-weary Sharks.
Post-game links:
A couple of links for your listening pleasure:
The Thrashers host the Washington Capitals tonight with first place in the Southeast Division on the line, even though Atlanta has played two fewer games than the reigning division champions. The Capitals are 4-2-2 with 10 points while the Thrashers are 4-1-1 with nine. The Caps have won two straight after going winless in four and they’re struggling with injuries and illness. Tyler Sloan and John Erskine are out, as is Alex Semin, which is a blow to Washington’s high-octane offense. Alex Giroux and Keith Aucoin have been called up from Hershey and joined the team today. As he was yesterday following Washington’s practice, Bruce Boudreau is being tight-lipped about who will start in goal tonight for Washington.
On the Thrashers front Ondrej Pavelec will get the nod in goal and Bryan Little will trade spots with Max Afinogenov, reuniting him with Slava Kozlov and Todd White. That line had plenty of success last year and Anderson wants to get them going. Kozlov, White, and Afinogenov are all playmakers at heart so moving Little to Kozlov’s line gives the line a true triggerman.
I spoke to Little about the change and he said he hadn’t been getting many shooting opportunities with Kovalchuk and Andropov. When Little was having success last season he was getting 3-4 shots per game on a consistent basis. this season he has 10 shots in six games. Having Little with White and Kozlov makes that line more dangerous and tougher to defend while Afinogenov’s addition to the Kovalchuk/Antropov line makes them incredibly dynamic. The switch was actually made in the game in Montreal and Anderson saw enough of it to want to try it again. It will be interesting to see how Washington tries to defend against the change. Their blueline has plenty of size, but not a lot of depth, and the Caps are giving up an even three goals per game.
If Washington can figure out how to contain the previously mentioned lined they’ll still have to deal with Peverley, Kane, and Armstrong who were the best line in Montreal. For his part Armstrong is just excited to play at home. He was on the IR for the season opener and the Thrashers haven’t been back in Blueland since. Peverley has a group of close to 20 friends in town from his hometown of Guelph, Ontario, so he’ll be fired up too.
Eric Boulton, Marty Reasoner, and Chris Thorburn will be relied on to do what they do best- get the puck deep and keep it there while wearing down the opposition. Unlike past years, this incarnation of the Capitals really doesn’t have an enforcer, so it will be interesting to see how that goes if the game gets physical as matchups between these two teams tend to.
Check back later this afternoon for video from the morning skate.
If you don’t have tickets to the game it’s not too late, especially if you’re on a budget. It’s a Thrashers Thursday, which means $15 tickets via Project 9-6-1. It also means the Thrashers will be wearing their red third jerseys.
Despite tonight’s shootout loss the Thrashers are happy with their overall road record as they come back to Atlanta to face Washington and San Jose on Thursday and Saturday.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that looked at the Thrashers’ schedule when it came out in July who honestly thought the team would come away from the five-game swing with seven of a possible 10 points.
A win in Montreal would have been ideal but the team showed some fight in battling back in a game that could have gotten out of hand if not for Ondrej Pavelec. The road-weary Thrashers outshot Montreal in the third period and had them on their heels. As John Anderson said after the game, this was the kind of game the Thrashers didn’t get points in last season.
We’re on the way to the airport now and we’ll post a recap and video late tonight. The road trip has been a blast, but it’ll be nice to be back in Atlanta.
The Thrashers trail the Canadiens 1-0 entering the third period in Montreal. Atlanta has been outshot 21-12 and didn’t get a shot off in 4:20 of PP time thus far.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that there’s 20 minutes left and as we saw in Buffalo and New Jersey, it only takes a shift or two to turn a game around. The key will be to stay out of the box and get some shots on goal. Montreal is clogging the passing lanes and pressuring the point men. The Thrashers can counter that by driving the net and drawing penalties.
