Atlanta Ready to Really Thrash
Following the 2009-10 season, the Atlanta Thrashers had missed the post-season in three straight campaigns and in nine of the past ten seasons. The Thrashers then rid themselves of two of their former No. 1 picks in Ilya Kovalchuk and Kari Lehtonen. Kovalchuk had simply outgrown the struggling Thrashers and Lehtonen was a borderline flop looking to rebuild his career elsewhere.
To top this off, the Thrashers are also about to begin play under their second general manager and their fifth coach in the franchise’s ten year history. The next appointed captain will also be Atlanta’s eighth.
Yet somehow, the Thrashers have made enough smart moves that the team facing all these circumstances entering the 2010-11 season is somehow actually pretty strong and capable of a very bright future.
After missing the playoffs, the Thrashers have been serious about shaking up a stagnant roster incapable of performing, and this year they look to be capable of qualifying for some post-season action.
Thus far, the Thrashers have been fairly adamant about dealing expiring contracts and not re-signing their free agents in order to rebuild the franchise as quickly as possible. Maxim Afinogenov, who was a one-year acquisition from the Buffalo Sabres and the team’s second-leading scorer, is currently still on the free agency board.
Also gone is Clarke MacArthur, the club’s highest scoring left-winger. MacArthur was awarded a $2.4 million contract through arbitration and the Thrashers decided to simply let him go his own way. Other unrestricted free agents courtesy of the Thrashers currently include forwards Evgeny Artyukhin, Josh Gratton, Vyacheslav Kozlov and Tim Stapleton, and defensemen Steve McCarthy, Mark Popovic and Christoph Schubert.
The Thrashers do have to focus on their restricted free agents, as clearing too much roster space will probably hurt the team. Two of the team’s key scorers, Niclas Bergfors and Bryan Little, have yet to ink new deals with Atlanta despite combining for 21-30-51 in 106 games last season. Little struggled a bit, but Bergfors showed a lot of promise in his first full NHL season.
What the Thrashers have done is acquire a lot of new talent. Mainly by purging the Chicago Blackhawk’s Salary Cup-winning roster once the team encountered some trouble in keeping within the salary cap. The Thrashers took advantage of Chicago’s lack of cap space by using their surplus cap to acquire forwards Dustin Byfuglien, Ben Eager, Andrew Ladd and Akim Aliu, and defenseman Brent Sopel in two separate trades.
Byfuglien is young and big and the 25-year-old, who is 6ft 4in and 257lbs, is primed to enter an annual range of 20 to 30 goals as evident by his breakout post-season showing. At 24, Ladd is a very promising power forward who has a good scoring touch and an intimidating frame of 6ft 2in and 200lbs.
Perhaps most importantly, the Thrashers addressed their goaltending issues. Lehtonen did not develop into the elite netminder the Thrashers had expected with a No. 2 overall pick in 2002. The Thrashers’ lack of goaltending plagued them thoroughly and they had a league-leading 28 one-goal losses during the regular season. 15 of these losses came in regulation, seven in overtime, and six via shootout.
To resolve this, Atlanta has picked up former St. Louis Blues No. 1 tender Chris Mason. Mason, who is coming off his first 30 win season, had a 2.53 goals-against average and is going to have to be dominant in close situations in order to give the Thrashers a much-needed standings boost.
All in all, Atlanta has managed to purge its roster while keeping some crucial pieces, like dominant forward Nik Antropov, while adding key players to fill glaring shortcomings. The new Atlanta Thrashers aren’t quite ready for serious dominancy, but look very capable of competing for middle of the pack play-off qualification this coming season.
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