Summer Doldrums Interrupted with News

The Atlanta summer, which has been brutally and relentlessly hot and humid, drags on and on and on, while my will to blog was seemingly squelched by the maddeningly protracted madness of the ongoing Ilya Kovalchuk scandal / saga. Just when you thought there was no hope of anything remotely resembling Thrashers news to emanate forth from the internets, Chris Vivlamore of the AJC gazed into the future to give us this tantalizting tidbit about the recent arbitration hearing with winger Clarke MacArthur. And then today, more news!! Hark the announcement about Ondrej Pavelec blaring forth like the annoying drone of a vuvuzela!!

In summary, here is a bullet-point listing of the newsworthy developments down at Thrashers HQ on Marietta Street:

1) GM Rick Dudley rendered, a bit prematurely I might add, the decision to let Clarke MacArthur go the way of free-agency by opting to "walk away" from an arbitration ruling that mystified the masses. Somehow, the arbiter ascertained that MacArthur's 35 point, -16 performance of a year ago was worth a dizzying sum of $2.4 M. Best of luck to Clarke (the 'e' is silent) in his attempt to earn $1.5 M on the open market, let alone $2.4 M!

2) As reported by a Czech news outlet known as iDNES.cz, goalie Ondrej Pavelec agreed to terms on a two-year contract that will pay him a total sum of $2.3 M, not per year, but total. While the terms have been finalized, as confirmed by the tweet of his agent Allan Walsh, the deal hasn't actually been signed nor filed to the NHL's Central Registry. If you ask me, this is a wonderful deal for the Thrashers' brass as OP has yet to prove that he possesses the necessary mettle to man the crease as a starter for the Thrashers.

Hopefully, the stream of news will continue to strengthen as we head into the weekend and early next week as Dudley should be closing in on finalizing deals to re-new the contracts of restricted free-agents Bryan Little, Nicklas Bergfors, Ben Eager and Andrew Ladd. The former Hawks, Eager and Ladd, both have arbitration hearings scheduled in the coming 10 days, but it is rather doubtful either of the hearings will actually occur as the Thrashers have a very proven track record of avoiding such non-sense and coming to terms with their RFA's.

The MacArthur decision was an isolated and calculated move that speaks to their intent of allowing young players such as Patrice Cormier, Fredrik Pettersson (acquired as a free-agent from the Swedish Elite League) and Spencer Machacek every opportunity to earn a job out of training camp this fall -- a shrewd approach in my humble opinion. Thusly, I doubt we have anything to worry about with respect to our other pending RFA's. We shall find out soon enough what their new deals entail. In the meantime, check out Kukla's Korner for a couple of blog write-ups involving the Thrashers. One features our entertaining GM while the other provides a thorough summary of the possible rationale behind Clark MacArthur decision.