Friday, December 12, 2008

Buffalo Falls Again to Resilient Thrashers Club



Three wins in a row and three solid performances in back-to-back games. I don't what John Anderson is doing differently than Bob Hartley and Don Waddell but he is getting a much stronger effort in these back to back games nights.The Little-White-Kozzie line is red hot. They were a bit lucky on both Bryan Little goals but earlier this season they were working hard and not getting rewarded. Last night they were rewarded with a few fortunate bounces after creating offensive pressure. You can see their confidence is sky high right now.Last Three Games: Bryan Little 3 Goals, 3 Assists = 6 pointsLast seven Games: Slava Kozlov 6 Goals, 5 Assists = 11 pointsWill opposition teams put their best checkers against the Kozlov line?Will that open up the door for the Kovalchuk line perhaps?Two rally wins in a row. Ideally you'd never like to fall behind in a game. Hedberg had a rough 2nd period and then made some quality stops in the 3rd. He's a great person but not necessarily the best backup goalie in the--that has been noticeable his last two games.Special Teams: Both clubs PP units went 2 for 3 which pushes the Thrashers PP% rankings up to 12th in the but the Atlanta PK has now fallen to dead last (30th).I'm not going to post the team Corsi numbers today, the main story was that the Exelby-Hainsey pairing had a rough time in terms of being outshot badly at ES. Hainsey bailed out Exelby a few times and played a huge 28 minutes. I listened to part of this game on the radio while driving to play my own hockey game, but Valabik seems to have played better.Real East Standing+7 NYR+7 MON+6 BUF+4 CAR+4 MON+4 NJD+2 WSH+0 OTT+0 TOR+0 TBL-1 PHI-2 ATL-3 FLA-4 NYISource

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