Need to shoot the puck more.

Buchberger is the hearth and soul of tis team.

Healthy scratches: Lambert, Harlock and Galanov

Good job by the TV broadcasting duo.

I put a list of the players regular season numbers on the players page.

See the practice schedule

The Open Ice hockey summit held in Toronto came up with a few recommendations on the future of hockey in Canada. The two most important ones were raising the draft age to 19 or 20 and the practice-to-game ratio. 

By moving the draft age to 19 or 20, you allow players to be more well-rounded mentally and physically. I think you would see an immediate change in attitude in kids. Now, if you're not 6', 220 at age 14, you can pretty much forget about it. That leads to all sorts of excesses: from andro and steroids to coaches and scouts who don't look further than heigth an weigth recruiting in development leagues. Eventually, the NHL would be welcoming late bloomers whith great skills and speed who are now droping out too early in their carrer. But as long as the GMs rather see a bad rookie paid 500,000$ than an average veteran paid 1,500,000$, I don't see that happening. 

The draft age alone is not enough. You need to allow players to develop outside the 60 minutes of game time. How refreshing would it be to see a rookie who can make hard passes right on the tape, a young defenseman learning the strategies against 3 on 2's instead of learning how to skate backward, a goalie not dropping on his knees every 5 seconds... But less games means less revenues. Unless people start paying to see pratices, I don't see that happening.

So. What does the future holds for hockey in North America? Euros needing their own All-Start games and an North-American Hall Of Could-Have-Been. In on the first ballot: Alexandre Daigle and Brett Lindros. Maybe Sedin's parents should have been invited to that summit.

I put to MY Thrashers team song: Cum on feel the noize by Oasis (originally by Quiet Riot). It's in MP3 format. Here is a link to the player I use. archives
 
 

Click here to see what an actual thrasher looks like.

Summary:

Games: You will find here my commentaries on every games, complete with who rocked, who sucked and the phone number of that blind referee. If your looking for box scores, go to  ESPN. Just whats and whys here, baby.

News: Waiver draft on Monday, Sept. 27; Yegorov arrives late and out of shape; Karlsson temporarely sent to Orlando.

Players: A list of the roster by position and links to stats. See my original comments After Thornton (Bos) and Lecavalier (Tam), don't expect 50 goals from Stefan next year. I am still waiting a call from the Thrashers to fill that 4th line left-wing spot.

Stats: Just the basic and who-need-to-know numbers. I will also post your own two-cents. Comments welcomed (including grammar, because, you see, I am a  transfer from Quebec, land of the Lafleur, Lemieux, Richard and 7 million hockey fans with names you can't pronounce correctly).

Links: Guess what's in there... See the Atlanta Thrashers web ring and the hockey web ring. Let me know if you want that I add yours.