in NHL Articles

Waddell believes

The Atlanta Flames played eight seasons in the National Hockey League, posted a record of .500 or better six times, and made the playoffs six times. However, the Flames never won a postseason series, and they suffered from attendance problems that caused the team to leave town in 1980.

Kent Nilsson, Guy Chouinard, Eric Vail and company moved north to Calgary, where the franchise eventually won a Stanley Cup. The city of Atlanta then remained without top-level professional hockey until the 1999-2000 season, when the expansion Thrashers launched their inaugural campaign.

In their first five seasons, the Thrashers finished with a losing record five times, and missed the playoffs five times. Their best season to date was 2003-04, when they finished 33-37-8-4, and in second place in the Southeast Division (behind the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning).

But Thrashers general manager Don Waddell thinks his team has what it takes to make the postseason this year. In fact, Waddell has guaranteed that Atlanta will be a part of the playoffs. His exact words (in case there’s a concern that he was misquoted):

“We’ll be in the playoffs. If you want to write ‘guarantee,’ I have no problem with that.”

Waddell’s words raised some eyebrows around the league. Mark Messier guaranteeing that the New York Rangers would win Game 6 of the 1994 Eastern Conference finals against New Jersey was gutsy, but he had a 50-50 shot of that coming true; pegging the Thrashers’ chances of getting into the 2006 playoffs at 50% right now would be pretty generous.

Atlanta currently finds itself in a battle for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with no less than five other teams - the Maple Leafs, Canadiens, Bruins, Islanders, and Panthers. The conference’s top seven right now have a gap between them and the eighth-place team; if that doesn’t change, the Thrashers will have to end up ahead of each of those five other contenders at the end of the regular season.

And poor play of late has the Thrashers looking more like an 11th-, 12th-, or 13th-place team in the conference, rather than an eighth-place team. One major issue is the team’s defensive play, as Atlanta ranks down with league doormats St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington in goals-per-game allowed.

The Thrashers hope that young goaltender Kari Lehtonen will develop quickly into an elite puckstopper and play a large part in pushing the team’s goals-against average down. Lehtonen missed most of the first half of the season with a groin injury, and his general conditioning has been a concern for management. Originally named to the Finnish Olympic team, Lehtonen has decided to skip the Turin tournament and instead rest up for the second half of the season.

A stellar stretch by Lehtonen will be crucial to the Thrashers’ playoff chances. Barring a trade, there is little room for improvement on Atlanta’s blueline, where veterans Jaroslav Modry, Greg de Vries, Niclas Havelid, Andy Sutton, and Shane Hnidy have them in a solid but unspectacular ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ situation.

The Thrashers’ offense, of course, is not a concern. Ilya Kovalchuk, Marc Savard, and Marian Hossa are all among the league leaders in points, with Slava Kozlov and Peter Bondra good second-line threats. In fact, the Thrashers will head into the Olympic break hovering around the league’s top five in goals-scored-per-game, well back of Ottawa but within shouting distance of teams like Detroit, Colorado, and Carolina.

Making the playoffs, though, will be as much about how the other teams in the Eastern Conference play as it will be about how the Thrashers finish out the season. Back when the Flames were making the playoffs, a large majority of the league made the cut; in today’s 30-team NHL, almost half of the league hits the golf course immediately after the regular season ends. Playoff guarantees from GMs of bubble teams might play well with the fan base, but quotes like Waddell’s could haunt them throughout the summer.

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