Thrashers.Today.Com

By Bud L. Ellis
thrashers.today.com

ATLANTA – When you talk toughness, you’ve got to look really, really hard to find an Atlanta Thrasher who embodies that adjective.

That might sound like a jab at the organization, but it’s not. I realize all hockey players are tough. I know that from standing in the Atlanta Knights’ locker room countless times in the mid-1990s, as a college sports reporter, watching those guys unwrap their bandages and hobble to the training room. It comes from standing at the corner of the glass at ice level and watching the head-on collisions that come from racing an opponent into the corner for a loose puck.

With all that said, there’s just not many guys who have donned the Thrashers’ sweater since the team’s inception in 1999 that leaps to mind as tough. Eric Boulton fit the bill from last year’s team. His 127 penalty minutes led a team that many in the NHL viewed as, well, soft.

But one former Thrasher comes to mind immediately in thinking about toughness: Jeff Odgers. No way I’d ever cross that dude in an alley … come to think of it, I think if I ever saw Odgie, I’d just quietly stop and stand and let him pass my way.

Odgers, for those of you who don’t know, has spent the past two seasons calling Thrashers hockey with the ever-entertaining Dan Kamal on the radio. He doesn’t have the smooth-as-silk delivery you might want from a broadcaster, but he does possess a deep knowledge of the game and wasn’t afraid to voice his opinions on the air.

Odgers is leaving the booth to spend more time with his sons back in Canada. He definitely will be missed, if for nothing else the thought that if somebody took a cheap shot at a Thrasher on the ice, old No. 20 might come out of the booth and drop the gloves at center ice one more time.

Best of luck, Odgie.

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