Thrashers news

I know I am a little late on some of this, but since most people who read this on a regular basis aren’t hockey fans, it will be news to you! As I was leaving to go out of town on Friday, I saw that the Thrashers officially hired a new coach. The organization has hired John Anderson who just coached the Thrasher’s AHL affiliate Chicago Wolves to the Calder Cup Championship. While in Chicago, Coach Anderson won 4 league championships and has coached several of the current players on the NHL roster for the Thrashers. Coach Anderson is a Toronto native and has 13 years of head coaching experience and played in 817 NHL games with Toronto, Quebec, and Hartford. He is a solid coach and I am sure he will do a good job. I like the fact that he already knows what most of the players are capable of doing since he has been in the Thrashers system and coached many of the players as they moved up. He definitely deserves a shot at being a head coach in the NHL, but I also wish we could have gotten a bigger named coach. Tampa Bay just agreed to terms with Barry Melrose to be there new coach. I am not sure how good of a coach he is, but I do enjoy his analysis on ESPN. He would have been fun to follow on a daily basis. Not only for his hair but he sometimes wacky quotes and analogies. Now we will just have to face him and his team 8 times a year.

Also, over the weekend, the NHL held their draft. The Atlanta Thrashers had two picks in the first round and seven picks total. With the #3 overall pick, the Thrashers took an offensive minded defenseman. This is an excellent pick for the Thrashers! Their defensive guys were horrible last year. Enstrom was the only solid blue liner on the team. With their second pick in the first round (which was the 29th pick overall) they took Daultan Leveille. Leveille, had 29 goals and 56 points in the Golden Horseshoe League. He will attend Michigan State University next fall instead of playing major-junior hockey, but the Thrashers now have his rights once he is done with school and ready to play in the NHL.

I am not going to go through the rest of the picks, mainly because I know most of you don’t really care also most of the rest of the guys will directly into the minor leagues and we won’t hear about them in the NHL for several years. But overall, it seems that the Thrashers had a pretty good draft this year. But what do I know; I don’t really have any evaluation skills when it comes to players in the junior leagues. We will just have to wait and see. I am just glad the Thrashers now have a coach and we good two good first round picks.

Go Thrashers!