Four teams played their 20th game of the season on Friday. One of those teams was the Atlanta Thrashers. Here's how their season has gone thus far.
Atlanta Thrashers - 8-9-3, good for 19 points: The post-Ilya Kovalchuk era hasn't gotten off to a particularly good start for the Thrashers. Granted, the Ilya Kovalchuk era in New Jersey isn't going any better, but I digress. Despite losing Kovalchuk, scoring hasn't really been the issue for Atlanta. They've scored 63 goals. The issue is they've given up 69 goals.
Andrew Ladd is leading the team in points with 19, while Evander Kane has the most goals with eight. Dustin Byfuglien has the second most points at 17 while playing a fair amount of defense this season. Despite his status as a fan favorite in Chicago, he never actually did that much scoring. With more opportunity in Atlanta, that looks like it may no longer be the case. I certainly didn't see that coming. Tobias Enstrom has added 15 points of his own. Alexander Burmistrov only has three goals and eight points, but he leads the team in outstanding goals against the Washington Capitals.
The issue is that this team is not doing well preventing goals. Nik Antropov is minus-10. Kane is minus-8. Johnny Oduya has six points and is minus-9. More concerning, through 14 games former third overall pick Zach Bogosian only has three points and is a minus-8. Meanwhile, Drew Doughty, who was drafted right before him, is maybe the best defenseman in the league. Tough break there for the Thrashers.
Chris Mason has gotten the most games in net, but his .897 SV% leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately for Atlanta, Ondrej Pavelec has played well so far this season. After being one of the lesser netminders in the league last season, he has a .936 SV% this season.
As per usual, the Thrashers just haven't figured out how to stop other teams from scoring. Plus, I don't know if guys like Ladd and Byfuglien are the kind of players a team can rely on to keep scoring points. It hasn't been a good season for Atlanta thus far, though it hasn't been bad either, and quite frankly I think it is more likely they get worse from here on out.
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