No one would say it after the game, but Sunday’s contest against the Panthers was as close to a must-win game as you can have in the first week of November. Off the ice, Atlanta had lost their No. 1 draft pick to injury for a month and their starting goaltender to a sickness for a few days in just the last week. On the ice, things weren’t much better as the Thrashers lost their last three games by a combined score of 16-3.
That all said, to say Atlanta’s 5-3 win was big would be an understatement; just ask the coach. “Tonight, for me, it was like winning a playoff game. I felt just as nervous and as anxious as (in) a Game 7 [I coached in] in the past,” head coach John Anderson said about his team’s bounce-back.
The win ended the team’s six-game losing streak, and for the first time all year Atlanta was able to win the battle of the second period. It must have been the extra hour of sleep the team got after the end of daylight savings time, as Atlanta’s offense woke up for the middle frame, especially the team’s All-Star Ilya Kovalchuk.
Kovalchuk scored twice in the second. Both times, he one-timed shots from perfectly placed passes from Erik Christensen. The second was the most impressive, as Kovalchuk took a pass from Christensen, who sat just behind the net, and knocked the puck in while falling backwards to the ground. “Every game it looks like I get chances, but I can’t get it in. Tonight on the first one, I got a lucky bounce right on my stick,” a subdued Kovalchuk said after the game.
However, he knows the team has plenty of work ahead of it, and that change begins with him. “I have to play much, much better. You know when you’re -3, you can’t make the playoffs when you have minus players.” But until those numbers turn around Kovalchuk hopes the fans stick around and don’t read too much into the last few games. “We have to apologize to them, for those efforts in regards to 7-0 and 6-1. We’ve got a good team, we just can’t clinch wins right now. I promise we’re going to be in way better shape then we are right now.”
David Booth also scored one of Florida’s two goals in the second. Booth, who had two goals and the game-winner against Atlanta on Oct. 11, scored his first point since that last meeting between the teams on the goal.
Florida’s other 23-year old forward, Nathan Horton, also scored in the second, wrapping around the goal before ricocheting the puck off the leg of Atlanta goaltender Ondrej Pavelec. Even with Florida’s two goals Atlanta still took a 3-2 advantage in second period goals for the game and a 4-2 lead after two on the scoreboard.
Before the floodgates opened in the second it was Atlanta scoring first on a goal from Slava Kozlov. Kozlov scored a goal in his third consecutive game when he blasted a rebound past the goalline for his sixth of the season. Kozlov’s shot came after Garnet Exelby blasted a shot on goal off an Atlanta-won faceoff. Fittingly, the puck landed on the body of Florida goaltender Tomas Vokoun as he lay sprawled on his back, just as he did much of the first period due to Atlanta’s offensive outburst. Atlanta out-shot Florida 15-4 in the first period.
Even with all the scoring the game wasn’t without its tense moments, especially late, as the second period lead Atlanta fought so hard to build was cut to one early in the final frame after Brett McLean deflected a bouncing puck over the head of Pavelec. “Nobody tipped it. It was just a bad bounce,” Pavelec said about the goal. “The defense shared the puck, it went right on the ice and then off it, but nobody tipped it.”
Even Anderson wasn’t surprised that Pavelec was the latest Thrasher goalie to suffer from a simple bad bounce, even while playing a solid all-around game. “I thought he played a great game, but a couple of bad bounces went against him. So you see it’s not just Lehtonen and Hedberg getting the bad bounces, he’s well aware of them too.”
It was Pavelec’s first start of the season with the Thrashers. He took the roster spot of Kari Lehtonen before Saturday’s game, as Lehtonen said he was “under the weather,” and if it wasn’t for the performance by Kovalchuk, his start would have been the biggest story of the night.
Right after training camp there was talk surrounding a supposed trade request by Pavelec after he was sent to Chicago to start the season. The situation was defused by Don Waddell when the story broke, and now after earning a win for the Thrashers, the situation seems done with. “I hope so. I put everything behind me and I focused on my play,” Pavelec said about his hopes that everything is behind him and the team now. “I forgot everything. It wasn’t about hockey, so I just try to focus on hockey right now.”
As the mantra goes, winning cures everything, and now Atlanta will take a few days off before looking to continue the healing process. Atlanta’s next game will be back at home on Thursday at 7 p.m. against the New York Islanders.
GAME NOTES
- John Anderson said that Kari Lehtonen is day-to-day after missing the last two games, but that he has yet to talk to the training staff. Luckily, Anderson and the coaching staff won’t have to make a decision until Thursday when Atlanta hosts the New York Islanders.
- Colby Armstrong was flipped over by Florida goalie Tomas Vokoun on a breakaway in the third, injuring his hip on the play. Neither Armstrong nor Anderson had talked to the training staff, leaving no word on the severity of the injury.
Boral can be reached at jboral@scoreatl.com.
Loading ...
