Welcome Back Kari: Thrashers burn Isles, 4-0
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by CRS-ONE
This morning, the Atlanta Thrashers decided that they would make a statement tonight. That they did.
They ended a three game losing streak with a 4-0 shutout against the New York Islanders.
Both teams had goalies that were getting on the ice for the first time in a while. Atlanta's Kari Lehtonen has been out since October 16 with a groin injury. New York's Wade Dubielewicz hasn't made a start since October 11. The way Rick DePietro has been playing, he hasn't been needed too much.
The Thrashers took over 34 seconds into the game when Ilya Kovachuk got a beautiful breakaway goal. A little over five minutes later Eric "Don't Call Me Michael" Boulton and Marian Hossa each got a goal, with Hossa getting his less than a minute after Boulton. Slava Kozlov added a goal at the end of the first period,
You could just see how frustrated the Islanders were. Kovalchuk's early goal pretty much took Dubielewicz out of the game. Former Thrasher Andy Sutton was trying to start a fight with anyone from Atlanta, including Kovalchuk, Bryan Little and their assistant equipment manager. He finally got his wish about halfway through the second, in a fairly one sided whaling on Chris Thorburn.
Unfortunately for Sutton, this display of toughness didn't motivate the Islanders to get back into the game, and they remained scoreless.
Lucky for them, the Thrashers didn't get score again, which would have only made the loss more embarrassing. Things did get a little testy in the third when Islander Mike Comrie tried to start something with Garnet Exelby, who laid out Miroslav Satan with a fairly hard but clean hit.
He did have a few games in the AHL before coming back, but Lehtonen looked to be doing pretty well. He didn't move to hesitantly, so I'm assuming he's back at full strength. For the stat obsessed fans, this was Lehtonen's both first win and shutout of the season (he has eight throughout his career) and the first time the Thrashers shutout the Islanders since 1999.
As a team, I think the Thrashers are doing better under Don Waddell. They've stopped dumping and chasing the puck on offense in favor of better puck control and getting each other set up. The Thrashers are doing a much better job passing and getting the rebound. On defense, they're relying more on skill than physicality. Let's face it, a small Tobias Enstrom and a concussion prone Exelby aren't going to intimidate anyone.
The one thing the Thrashers really have to work on is their special teams; they are amongst the worst on both sides of the power play. They did hold the Islanders to 0-4, but they couldn't convert on seven power play chances. If they want to be taken seriously and have a run through the playoffs, this is something that they must work on.
The Thrashers take on the Devils at the Prudential Center tomorrow and meet up with the Islanders again this Wednesday at home.
