It’s hard to believe, but with only a quarter of the season completed, the Thrashers might be at the crossroads of their season. Atlanta faces the daunting task of playing six games in nine days with two separate trips to Canada. All of the games are winnable if, as head coach John Anderson has said repeatedly, the team plays a full 60 minutes.
Anderson wasn’t the only one who noticed a lack of intensity during Saturday’s loss to Columbus. Many of the players did as well, most notably defenseman Garnet Exelby. “We have a lot of passive passengers and not everybody is pulling their weight. It’s becoming more and more evident with every passing game,” Exelby said after Saturday’s game. He did his best to charge up the team, getting into multiple scrums during the game, but neither time was it enough to get the offense into gear.
Exelby is beginning to show himself as the emotional leader on the ice, and his intensity will be needed during the trip, especially when Atlanta finds itself trailing in an opponent’s building.
Atlanta will also need more than the energy of one player, the entire team will have to show up, especially in the early games of this span. With two trips North of the border, Atlanta will need to find the same chemistry the players had during their franchise-tying five-game win streak.
I expect this to be aided by changes from the bench, as Anderson tries to find an offensive spark. He removed Eric Perrin from the top line on Saturday and replaced him with Erik Christensen. Throughout his brief tenure as Thrashers head coach, Anderson has shown little fear in changing lines if he feels a certain line isn’t performing up to expectations, and you have to respect a guy for not sitting back and just hoping things will change.
Hopefully that luck will change Tuesday against a team that is finding its own struggles, the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs, similar to the Thrashers, have given up leads late in games while not playing consistently for 60 minutes. In their last game, the Leafs held leads of 3-0 and 4-2 before losing in overtime to Chicago 5-4.
Even with that complacency, Toronto remains out of the Eastern Conference basement because of the surprising play of new acquisitions. Much like Atlanta’s Ron Hainsey, Toronto has seen rookies Luke Schenn and Mikhail Grabovski along with free agent acquisitions Niklas Hagman and Nikolai Kulemin play their way to the top two lines.
Toronto also just recently added another piece in a trade with the St. Louis Blues. Toronto gave up Carlo Colaiacovo and Alex Steen for Lee Stempniak. In the end the move will probably be a steal as Toronto head coach Ron Wilson was recently quoted as saying “I tell [Colaiacovo] every day – you’re not in very good shape.” Stempniak has scored 13 points in 14 games with St. Louis.
To first beat Toronto and then Washington, Atlanta will need to see the play of Ilya Kovalchuk pick up. If Ilya is able to break out of his slump, the ice may just blow right open for his teammates. Even with the focus of opposing defenses slowly falling away from Kovalchuk, teammates Slava Kozlov and Brian Little have found their way to the scoresheet. However, Kovalchuck had eight points during Atlanta’s five-game win streak, and the Thrashers are 6-4-1 overall when Kovalchuk gets at least one point.
Even John Anderson said it himself: “As one of our leading goal-scorers we kind of need him to step up there at that point and not fan on that shot or not miss a good wrist shot from a good position. But, again, you’re going to get tough games like that from even the best players in the world.”
Boral can be reached at jboral@scoreatl.com.
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