Thrashers.Today.Com

By Bud L. Ellis
thrashers.today.com

ATLANTA – Finally, we’re here. Training camp opens Saturday morning for the Atlanta Thrashers. After an offseason of bemoaning last season’s disaster, of chasing and missing some free agents, after bringing in help for the blueline and a couple of wingers, the time has come.

Lace up them skates, boys. The season is almost here.

We all know nobody outside Atlanta is expecting much out of this team. That’s a fair assessment, given what transpired with this team last season and the fact that, for the new people brought in, there are plenty of question marks to try and answer and holes to try and fill as the countdown to opening night Oct. 10 ramps up in earnest.

But for all the problems that have beset this franchise the past year and a half – from the firing of Bob Hartley to the ownership situation, from Brian Campbell saying no to the speculation of whether Ilya Kovalchuk is two seasons away from playing elsewhere – I sense a team that’s in a different place than this time last year.

The Thrashers of 2007-08 may have started training camp as defending Southeast Division champions, but it was a fractured bunch. Hartley already had lost the team, in part because of his inability to rely on younger players, partly because of the goaltending flip-flop that made the previous spring’s playoff sweep to the Rangers all the more disconcerting. That malaise spilled over into the season.

The results: we all know they weren’t pretty.

But a new day has dawned. New head coach John Anderson is such a breath of fresh air for a franchise that really needs a charge of enthusiasm. Anderson’s waited more than a dozen years for an opportunity to coach in the NHL. He knows these players. He pledges to employ a “chameleon” system that will adjust to exploit what the opposition does worst. He has no problem handing responsibility to young, unproven players, knowing that sometimes all a player needs is a coach to say, “I believe in you.”

Anderson will believe in his players … all of them. You certainly can’t say that about Hartley.

Training camp opens Saturday, and 51 players will hit the ice with their NHL dreams right in front of them. For all the ridiculous stories out there about the Thrashers being on the move at some point in time, it’s not happening. This team is here to stay. It has a dedicated fan base that demands excellence, but knows it’s a process. That process may be longer than some hope in producing a consistent contender, but you don’t walk away in the middle of the job.

Saturday, the Thrashers go back to work. The whistle blows on this season soon. It’s time to grab the hard hat and lunch pail and get to it, pushing to get this franchise back in the playoffs. It may seem like foolhardy bravado on the eve of training camp, but so be it.

I think this team can get there, can get back to the playoffs, can re-ignite this fan base and this city. But it starts right now. The pursuit of spring glory is why we are here in the first place, and it’s slated to begin on a Saturday morning in mid-September.

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