The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
“shhhhhhhh…be vewy vewy quiet.we’re hunting thwashuhs…”
Oh, sorry…shouldn’t you be hunting wabbits…uh, rabbits?
“Wabbits don’t pway hockey…they can’t get the hewwmets on their heads…hehehehehe.”
I see your point. Have you had much luck bagging thwashuhs…uh, thrashers?
“Not weawwy. They’re pwetty much dead awweddy.”
Yeah, they’ve had a tough time lately.
Atlanta is ending the season very much in the way they started it, and that is not a good thing for the Thrashers. They started the season 0-6-0, upon which they relieved Bob Hartley of his coaching duties. Well, now they are in the middle of a 2-6-4 run that has driven them to the bottom – almost – of the Eastern Conference. This morning the Thrashers are in 14th place and gasping for air.
Just as the 0-6-0 start was not a result of accident, so the misfortune of these last dozen games has not been the product of chance:
Record: 2-6-4
Goals for/against: 29/46
Power play: 10/49 (20.4%)
Penalty killing: 44/54 (81.5%)
Shots for/against-per game: 25.6/36.6
Record in three-or-more-goal margin games: 0-4
Record in extra-time games: 1-4
This just isn’t a very good hockey team at the moment. They’ve won one game in regulation since February 2nd (that was last night). They are a defensive disaster. Here is an indicator…they have no players – none – who have played at least 20 games this year and are on the plus side of the ledger. Even Colby Armstrong, who came over from Pittsburgh in the Marian Hossa deal on deadline day, has managed a -4 in eight games with the Thrashers.
If you’re wondering about the big guys and their performance during this drought…
Ilya Kovalchuk: 8-5-13, +3
Mark Recchi: 2-7-9, -4
Eric Perrin: 2-4-6, -6
Slava Kozlov: 1-4-5, -5
Bobby Holik: 2-4-6, -3
Tobias Enstrom, who was making a push to get some rookie of the year consideration, has fallen on some hard times of his own on the blue line. He has two assists and is a -8 over the last dozen games.
But when Atlanta plays the Caps, you can’t discount the fact that some of those same Thrashers have saved their best efforts for those games…
Kovalchuk: 35 games, 20-24-44, +15
Recchi: 88 games, 46-58-104, +22
Armstrong: 8 games, 3-5-8, -2
Holik: 84 games, 22-24-46, +10
Over the last dozen games, that 46 goals allowed sticks out. Can’t necessarily blame that one on Marian Hossa’s departure (maybe Pascal Dupuis was the key all along?). Seven times they have allowed more than three goals, five times they have allowed at least five goals. Part of that is the fact that Atlanta goaltenders have been the targets in an arcade game – the Thrashers are allowing 11 more shots a game over the last dozen contests than they’ve registered on offense – and it’s showing up in the goaltending statistics.
Kari Lehtonen, who was the goaltender of record in last night’s 6-4 win over Calgary, is 1-5-3, 3.88, .893 in ten appearances over the last dozen games. He’s 8-3-2, 2.56, .919 in 13 career games against the Caps. If he doesn’t get the call in the back half of the back-to-back, Johan Hedberg is 1-1-1 in four appearances over the last dozen games, 3.37, .902. He is 6-2 (with two ties), 2.66, .911 in 10 lifetime appearances against the Caps…it sure seems like more, doesn’t it?
Looking at the Thrashers, it’s a case of a damaged but dangerous club. Losing Hossa robbed them of a lot of offense. But this is not, and hasn’t been a very good defensive team all year (tied for last in goals against-per-game, 27th in penalty killing). They are, however, 4-2 against the Caps this year, with two of the wins coming in extra time. So, while the Thrashers have fallen on hard times, that probably won’t be much to bank on for the Caps if the red-white-and-blue don’t bring their A-game.
The Caps need to get off fast, then stand on the Thrashers’ throats. Last night Atlanta came from three goals down to beat Calgary in a game that had no meaning, save pride, for the Thrashers. If the Caps do not tend to business, they might take this – if not to their @#$%ing graves, as Herb Brooks might put it -- to the off season as the one in the stretch run they let slip away.
We don’t think they will, though (do we ever?)…
Caps 5 – Thrashers 2
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