Joe Friday looking for just the facts on Thrasherville beat

Today we have the privilege of being treated to a blog written by the 2010 Rawhide Blog Comment of the year winner, Joe Friday, (formerly known to us as “Bob”). He has been a regular contributor to this forum for quite some time now… before even I began hosting it in the fall of 2007. Over the past several I have come to appreciate and value his keen insight and knowledge in regards to the Thrashers, NHL hockey and sports in general. And this past season I had the distinct honor of finally meeting him in person prior to a Thrashers game.

So, without any further ado, I yield the floor to Joe Friday/Bob…

Unleash Joe Friday!

So this past Weds. night I was relaxing in my rose colored world, watching some stout NHL playoff action (great games so far, but the cream is rising to the top in these series), and feeling relieved in my delusion that we’re out from under the Master of Disaster, the Architect of Doom, the Fomenter of Futility, one Don Waddell, on the hockey personnel decisions for our beloved Thrashers, when I clicked on my Twitterific to see Jeff Marek from HNIC tweet:

“Atlanta GM…whoops…President Don Waddell in Barrie for the Colts game vs. Mississauga tonight.”

Riddle me this, Thrasherville: Which job duty as Team President in charge of business only was Don Waddell fulfilling in Barrie Ontario while taking in an OHL game on Weds. night?

Was he schmoozing Molson Brewing Co. to talk them into shipping the high gravity bottles into Phillips to ease our collective pain while watching his club? Was he signing up Bowlerama Barrie to be our 2010-11 sponsor of intermission human bowling?!?

So, is there truly a new Sheriff in town, or is it simply the more things change, the more they stay the same? I think I’ll hold off on re-signing up for season tickets there for a bit, Mr. Spirit Sales team.

Fool me 9 times, shame on you . . .

Time to grab the reins and fix this mess ourselves!

What you have to understand is that myself and thousands of other former season ticket holders have all come to the conclusion that we’re all passing in the wind until Don Waddell is gone from making the hockey personnel decisions. I mean, what further proof do you need? 10 years of futility? 5 year plans come and gone? No free agent worth his salt wants to re-sign under Waddell? One playoff appearance only to be swept? Never having a true #1 goalie? A list of defenders that make Bobby Orr weep?

Many of us have known from the early years that Don was a nice guy, a solid good man . . . with little to no ability to build a successful hockey club. With him in place, it’s just the same old thing year after year. The names on the back of the sweater change, but the results don’t differ (golfing in April every year while 1/2 of the rest of the league is embarking upon the real season). And now he’s still working with Dudley (per Dudley) to find our next coach and he’s at the OHL playoffs this week scouting kids that he and Dudley, assumingly, will be targeting in draft day trades?

Time to fix this mess, guys and gals, so I’d like to reiterate my plan to get the Thrash headed in the right direction and into the real season come April 2011:

1)Sign Nabokov to a 2year $5m per contract

2)Take my asst. GM’s, Badger Bob’s, advice and trade NJ’s #1 and “pick your favorite off our prospect list not named Patrice Cormier” for Patrick Sharp and take his $4.15m per that he’s owed for the next 2 years off the ‘Hawks hands

3)Sign Alexander Frolov to a 4 year $4m per year deal

4)Re-sign Kubina to a 3 year $5m per year deal

Trade Tobias Enstrom to the highest bidder, move Todd White to whoever will have him.

Sign Bryan Little’s to a 4 year $1.75m per year. Ditto with Bergfors. Let MacArthrur walk. We’ll re-sign Slater and Arthukin as UFAs to 2 year deals, making the same amount they made this year.

We’ll be closely watching who gets the coaching axe at the conclusion of this year’s campaign and pickup the best available candidate. Moose Hedberg will be offered the position of goalie/bench asst. for your Atlanta Thrashers.

We’ll be jettisoning the Blueland campaign and associated pansy blue uniforms. Phillips Arena will now be known simply as Our House. You come into our house, you better keep your heads up, we are playing hockey, old style. Every shift, every period, we’re going to lead the league in clean hard checks. Our new home unis will be Black and Blue. All marketing will show our colors, we are black and blue and we send our opponents off the same way, win or lose.

Your starting lineup for the 2010-2011 Atlanta Thrashers:

Frolov-Antropov-Sharp

Peverley-Little-Bergfors

Kane-Slater-MacArthur

Boulton-Reasoner-Thorburn

Kubina-Hainsey

Bogosian-Oduya

Kulda-Valabik

Nabokov (Pavelec backup)

$78 ticket in the lower bowl is now $70 per game (similar drops for every seat in the place) and there’s going to be two and only two season ticket holder plans:

1)Full season ticket holders buy that seat for every regular season game at 25% off the listed price, receive complimentary preseason tickets, and get exclusive meet and greets with the players as well as the option to buy additional seats on a game by game basis at $25 per seat as available. Only full season ticket holders will receive game day giveaways, bobbleheads, etc. Full season ticket holders will have access to the new season ticket holder pavilion for exclusive food and drink discounts.

2)1/2 season ticket holder plan geared toward weekends receive 15% off the listed price and also get the exclusive meet and greets with the players

The cheerleaders go. There’s no cheerleaders in hockey. The girls cleaning the ice during timeouts will stay but they’re going to be decently clothed. Thrash will go back to being the old Thrash who can actually dance and rappel down a rope from the ceiling. The jumbotron will be replaced with an actual high def screen that isn’t covered with screen burns. AC/DC will be prominently played pushing our Black and Blue theme. An actual organ will play music in Our House, a real pipe organ, played by someone that has a clue on how to get a crowd rev’d up. And we’re going to hire our award winning in-game producer back away from the Crapitals.

All weekday start times are 7:30pm, Saturday 7pm, Sunday at 5pm.

Drop the puck.

Time to head to the summer home in the Riviera, Ilya?

Ilya Kovalchuk and the Devils will now begin their offseason after losing to the Flyers in round-one of the playoffs (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Philly, sans Carter and Gagne, just knocked the Devils out in 5 games. You think Sweet Lou is even considering calling Jay Grossman? Fuhgeddaboudit. Lou tried to use Kovy to inject some much needed offense into his club, but Kovy was oil and water on that club.

LA will be Kovy’s home next season, and I say good riddance to a one way player.

He’ll never be a great one like Crosby and Ovechkin (who are showing this playoff season, once again, what true all around great hockey players they are). Bob Hartley tried to save Kovy’s career and turn him into a hockey player, but Ilya wants none of it.

 I will not miss him; we need to turn this club into one that has 3 lines that can all score. Kovy, it was nice knowing ya, stop by once in a while, but До скорого!