12 years and never won a playoff game. Legacy of total failure.
Don Waddell is the Stu Jackson of the NHL. Bumbling fool of a GM who was given oodles of top-5 picks to work with but was never able to craft a roster that was anything but ... some top-5 draft picks surrounding expansion-level talent.
Easy there Bigboy no one had a worse record than Stu we are taking 5 man Bball which is much easier to build a team in.
Comparing S** J***son with anyone should always be spelled that way IMO as his tenure in Vancouver was a complete joke.
Actually after 2 months of play Thrashers seem to be forgotten. No whinning anymore, noone cares...
Some of is still care, but its over and done with. If anybody were to ask me "what happened to the Thrashers?" I'd be happy to go in depth about the team and its struggles, but Atlanta's only significance to hockey history is that a team that is unwanted by its owners cannot succeed.
Some of is still care, but its over and done with. If anybody were to ask me "what happened to the Thrashers?" I'd be happy to go in depth about the team and its struggles, but Atlanta's only significance to hockey history is that a team that is unwanted by its owners cannot succeed.
It's sad, but there's nothing to complain about. It happened; it's done.
I felt like we didn't have the experience in the mangerial office to build a good time. From my perspective, the thought process of the higher ups was just, "hey lets get guys who can score lots of goals." Once they realized they had NO defense, they drafted Bogosian and Enstrom, but it was too late. Hell, Garnet Exelby cracked the top 4 D IIRC.
It's sad, but there's nothing to complain about. It happened; it's done.
I felt like we didn't have the experience in the mangerial office to build a good time. From my perspective, the thought process of the higher ups was just, "hey lets get guys who can score lots of goals." Once they realized they had NO defense, they drafted Bogosian and Enstrom, but it was too late. Hell, Garnet Exelby cracked the top 4 D IIRC.
What's worse is that Garnet Exelby is in the conversation for best skater developed by the Thrashers. When guys like Chris Tamer, Andy Sutton, and Nic Havelid are drawing top pairing minutes, you know you are in trouble. The year they made the playoffs Andy Sutton and Greg de Vries were their top pairing. The Thrashers were just a painful team to watch in their own zone. The penalty kill, though, was more awesome than a Roger Corman flick.
As long as some of us are around, no one will ever forget.
And if I had the cash to do so, I'd be putting a team there in the next expansion cycle. It'll work; the issues involving Atlanta were entirely ownership-related.
The Atlanta Thrashers? Why would I remember a team that hid in the shadows when they were still a team? They barely did anything great enough for us Hockey fans to remember.
Of their eleven seasons, the first three were losing seasons worthy of comparison to the Seals, Scouts, Rockies. From then on they hovered around the .500 mark with only two winning seasons but by all measures they were merely a mediocre team.
It's easier to be a mediocre team in a 30-team league.
They only made the playoffs once. The Seals made the playoffs twice, albeit with losing records in the weak Western conference.
The Seals are more likely to be remembered for all those losing seasons, for the colored skates (there were other variations than just white), for the colorful uniforms, for Charles O. Finley's involvement, for cheerleader Crazy George, for Gilles Meloche, for low attendance.... being bad is more memorable than being merely mediocre.
Never going to forget them giving up Coburn for Zhitnik. And then that large overpayment for Tkachuk. And then getting swept in the 1st round and never coming close to sniffing the playoffs again. Good stuff.
Never going to forget them giving up Coburn for Zhitnik. And then that large overpayment for Tkachuk. And then getting swept in the 1st round and never coming close to sniffing the playoffs again. Good stuff.
I have said this 1001 times on this board, but the trade for Zhitnik is what got us to the playoffs, and the Trade for Tkachuk actually wasn't all that bad.
Coburn was mopey and refused to put in the effort in Chicago to earn a spot on the roster. He just expected Bob Hartley, a coach who simply doesn't play rookies for crap, to give him a spot. That made him an expendable asset, while being our best prospect. Zhitnik came in and scored 14 points in 18 games down the stretch to help pull the team out of its traditional late season tailspin. That being said, I distinctly remember watching the announcement and saying to myself, "Zhitnik, really? Surely Coburn could have snagged more."
As for Tkachuk, he came in and put up 15 in 18 down the stretch, gave the Thrashers a semblance of a #1C (he played center that year, for some reason), and was as much responsible for pulling the team into the playoffs as Zhitnik was. Tkachuk was traded for Glen Metropolit, who is back to playing in Europe, a 2007 1st, which St. Louis traded to Calgary who chose Mikael Backlund, who, while promising, isn't expected to be anything special, a 3rd in 07 Brett Sonne, a 2nd in 08, Phillip McRae, and a conditional 1st in 08, Bogosian, which was traded back to ATL when Tkachuk re-signed with St. Louis. Obviously it is still too early to fully judge the prospects involved in the deal, but, IMO, Bogosian is easily the best part of that deal, and he still ended up with Atlanta. People remember this trade as some massive house clearing for a mediocre player, and it simply was not that. The Thrashers lost what amounts to meh, in exchange for their one and only playoff berth.
And, as someone who got to be at the only two home playoff games in Thrashers history, I'd make these trades absolutely every time I'm offered it.
Is Waddell a bad GM or the scapegoat of bad circumstances?
No need to bring up Patrick Stefan as that can happen to ANY team. The fact is the Atlanta Thrashers were on the rise before the Healtey/Snyder incident took place. Waddell did the right thing by turning that asset into Marian Hossa (a great player) but Hossa's alligiance to the Thrashers wasn't as strong as Waddell rightfully anticipated, so once again he did the right thing by being active at the deadline and getting what was probably the best offer they could for Hossa at the time. Many people in the media thought Pittsburgh overpaid for what was seen and turned out to be a rental player. What did the Panthers do with Jaybo? Nothing. Then you have the contract situatuion with Kovalchuk. How much money were they suppose to throw at him? Waddell's job was to build a team on a limited budget...I'm sure he would've loved to keep Kovalchuk around for 12 more years or whatever it was but once again he could see the feeling wasn't mutual, so he turned that player into future assets which could pay dividends for Winnipeg in the future. Then you have this problem with the minor league Chicago Wolves, an organization that prides itself on winning first and developing young talent second. Is it any wonder things turned out the way they did? A lot of people like the current direction of this Thrashers team, the question is will they put their egos aside and give Waddell the credit he deserves if this core group of players he oversaw manages to turn things around in Winnipeg? Only time will tell.
Kovalchuk wanted assurance the team wasn't going anywhere and the front office couldn't give that to him so he wanted out.
Huge disappointment and maybe a historical "what could have been?"
They were owned by media mogul Ted Turner, had a state of the art arena in Atlanta, a pretty important hub in the South East, and entered the league with Stefan, Heatley, Kovalchuk, Lehtonen and Coburn as their first five first rounders.
For a brief moment, it looked like they had a franchise goalie, a stud defenseman, 2 franchise wingers and at least a very good centerman.
Then it all unraveled...
An experiment like Phoenix probably should be aborted, but Atlanta looked so good to start with and there wasn't much of an effort to save them.
OT, but I remember seeing a "Crazy George" doing the rounds of minor league hockey in the '90s. He was actually quite a lot of fun in the relatively small arenas, where he could be seen and heard clearly by everyone in attendance. Is this the same guy? Did he really get his start with the Seals?
Back on-topic, I went to a couple of games in Atlanta. My lasting memories:
- The coolness, but weirdness of the arena. One minute you're in a mall food court watching massive CNN screens, next minute you're in the concourse of an NHL arena. They had that massive wall of suites, and the bird head that shot fire out of its mouth after goals. It was an odd place to see a game, kind of monolithic and corporate but not as faceless as some of the slightly older arenas. It reminded me just a little of Nashville's arena, but felt a lot bigger on the inside.
- I showed up early to one of the games so I could go down to the player's tunnel for warm-ups. You could very easily bend over and see the area outside the locker room door -- players getting pumped up, trainers working on sticks, guys standing around in suits. It was neat to just walk up and get that close.
- The people in the arena were from all over the place. I met a guy from Quebec who just happened to be in town that night. The crowd was noticeably more racially diverse than in other NHL arenas, typical of Atlanta. It seemed like a young crowd to me, too, maybe because it was right downtown.
- If we're being honest, the crowd was tiny and you could pretty much sit where you wanted. That has its perks when you're just trying to enjoy the game as a visitor. There were a ton of fans for the visiting teams both times, and I felt for the home fans having to deal with that.
- The huge concourse murals from the All Star Game were neat.
I've said it many times on here, but it's a tragedy the way that organization was scuttled. There was nothing inherently wrong with having a team in Atlanta and they ought to have been very successful.
OT, but I remember seeing a "Crazy George" doing the rounds of minor league hockey in the '90s. He was actually quite a lot of fun in the relatively small arenas, where he could be seen and heard clearly by everyone in attendance. Is this the same guy? Did he really get his start with the Seals?
Does Kovalchuk go into the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame or get his number retired up there? He's technically the best player in the current installment of that franchise's history, unless they're completely ignoring their Atlanta roots.
