Do you remember how in high school that everyone seemed to be a part of a group? Whether you were a part of the popular group, the nerds or the band, at least you represented something when you walked down the halls. But there were a few kids that just sort of floated through with no group, no friends and really, no identity whatsoever. That’s the way I’ve always looked at the Atlanta Thrashers, until this season.
The Thrashers were always a team that floated through a season, mainly because there were so bad and so irrelevant. They had no direction until this off-season when they decided to raid the Stanley Cup champions and take several of their players through trade. New GM Rick Dudley made his mark in his first off-season with the franchise and new head coach Craig Ramsey will have the first crack to coach “Chicago Blackhawks South”.
There’s so much change within the forward lines because of the trades for the former Blackhawk players and several other moves made during a busy summer. Just with the forwards alone, the changes are plentiful. The new forwards are: Dustin Byfuglien, Frederik Modin, Andrew Ladd and Ben Eager. Gone are: Maxim Afinogenov, Colby Armstrong, Slava Kozlov, Clarke MacArthur and Todd White.
Finding chemistry during training camp will be so vital for this team to get off to a good start. They will have to hope that Nik Antropov and Rich Peverley can repeat or better their career years from a year ago. They will also look for Evander Kane and Niclas Bergfors can be much better in their second seasons.
The Thrashers may not have major names on the backend, but they certainly have an under-rated defence. They have a good mix of youth and experience now. The youth is represented by Tobias Enstrom and Zach Bogosian, while the experience is led by newcomer Brent Sopel and Johny Oduya. It could be even better if the rumours are true that the Thrashers want to put Byfuglien back on defence.
The goaltending should be improved as well with the addition of Chris Mason from St. Louis. Ondrej Pavelec just never showed enough to solidify the number one position, so Mason comes in to take a crack at it. Mason had 30 wins last season with a 2.53 GAA and a .913 save percentage.
Two players to watch out for in camp are Dustin Byfuglien and Frederik Modin. We just touched on the big story in camp for the Thrashers. Does he stay as a forward or go back to his natural position of defenseman? Reports suggest that he’s unhappy with the idea of going back to defence. What do the Thrashers do? As for Modin, he comes over from the Kings after an injury-plagued season. In fact, Modin has had injury problems for the last 3 seasons. The most games he’s played in a season in the last 3 years is 50 and he’s missed a total of 129 games in three seasons. What does he have left at this point?