Well, it had to happen at some point and tonite was the nite the Thrashers finally broke through with some offensive production against a stingy Predators team that featured a regular season line-up save for the goaltender, who ostensibly is fighting for a chance to back up Pekka Rinne. The Thrashers found the back of the net 3 times, but came up short in a closely contested 4 to 3 loss, their 4th straight of the pre-season.
After the Thrashers fell behind midway through the first period, they battled back fiercely to knot the game at 1 when Nigel Dawes deposited a rebound off a Johnny Oduya blueline blast at the left door-step to put the finishing touch on a well-executed power play. However, the momentum swung back to the Preds in the early stages of the 2nd period as their relentless pressure caused some balky decisions by the Thrasher D as well as two penalties in the span of 3 and a half minutes.
The Preds made things look easy when up a man and quickly increased their lead to 3 to 1 on the strength of their back-to-back power plays. But the Thrashers responded immediately with 2 quick goals of their own in the span of 3 minutes to tie the game. Unfortunately, the Predators would control the puck in the first 8 minutes of the 3rd period and the sloppy defensive play of the Thrashers led to a goal by David Legwand. The Thrashers fought hard and had some good chances down the stretch, but couldn't tally the equalizer to force an extra period. Most notably, Evander Kane received a sweet feed from Rich Peverley for a wide-open look from the high slot, but his laser-like wrister misfired barely missing the corner of the goal.
After the game, our hard-working AJC beat writer, Chris Vivlamore, cornered big Ben Eager, who captured the essence of how I felt after the Thrashers allowed their sloppy play to cost them a win in the 3rd period: “It’s never fun to get behind, but we responded well and battled back to tie it up,” Eager said. “A bit of a sloppy goal at the end and it cost us a game. We have to tighten up a few things. We can’t be losing games in the third period like that." Preach it Brother Ben!
Overall, it was as solid effort for a team that is still tinkering with line combos in order to get meaningful looks at players who may not make it to the final Opening Night roster (Anthony Stewart, Alex Burmistrov, Freddy Pettersson and Nigel Dawes). But Coach Ramsay must be pleased with the gradual improvement in the last week or so as the boys in blue try to come together in a new system within a very condensed period of time. Vivlamore also queried Coach Ramsay in his post-game blog and Ramsay had this to say about the game:
"I truly believe that defensively we will be fine,” Thrashers coach Craig Ramsay said. “I can teach that. We have good people who can play. But scoring goals was an obvious problem and tonight we looked better. We are looking at how our people play and how they learn our system. We want to win every game but it hasn’t happened. We’ve been in them.”
While the defense does look to be very much improved, and a lot harder to score on thanks to a more earnest approach to blocking shots and harrassing would-be shooters, someone needs to send a telegram to Ron Hainsey asking him to awaken from his stupor. The highest-paid veteran D-man was absolutely dreadful tonite and seemed to struggle with his decision-making throughout the game. Perhaps some of it is unfamiliarity with his 3rd defensive partner -- this time Brent Sopel -- in as many games. However, he must be stronger on the puck and when he attempts to clear the puck from traffic or else the defensive unit will have a very noticeable weak link. Sopel is a very sound stay-at-home D-man and if Hainsey struggles playing with him, then I shudder to think what he may do with a less experienced partner.
I hate to single out Ron because I think that he has many very good attributes as a D-man, but if he doesn't figure out a way to make better use of his strengths without succumbing to his weaknesses, then he's going to be the target of a lot of Thrashers fans' scorn this season. But there were a few others who underwhelmed me this evening. However, I'm feeling pretty worn out at this late hour and I will cobble together a run-down of my best and worst from the game tomorrow when I'm feeling a bit more perky. Till then, have a good nite!
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