If Thrashers keep winning, they can overcome damage
Hello, Atlanta. I'm Dustin Byfuglien. Please come watch me and my team. (Curtis Compton/AJC)
I look at the Atlanta Thrashers and I think, “Japan.”
Hang with me for a minute. Back in school days, I had an issue of Playboy magazine. (It was a mistake. I think it was stuck between the Time and the National Geographic at the newsstand and accidentally ended up in my possession.)
Anyway, this issue of Playboy had an interview with Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, who said when he first came to the United States he was astounded that the term, “Made in Japan” had such a negative connotation. So he vowed to change that. Then in 1979, Sony came out with the “Walkman” and of course we all bowed in unison. Before long, we were lampooning anything that read, “Made by GE.”
Now, when I say, “Thrashers,” what comes to mind? Is it that wonder of a team that has won eight of its last nine games, or the past horrors of a franchise that never has won a playoff game? Is it Dustin Byfuglien or Alexei Zhitnik? Andrew Ladd or Johan Garpenlov? Ondrej Pavelec or Damian Rhodes? Rick Dudley or Don Waddell?
Deep wounds don’t scab over quickly. The empty seats in Philips Arena are evidence of that. But for what it’s worth, something pretty amazing is going on with this franchise.
Players have taken to Craig Ramsay's attack-first philosophy.
The Thrashers aren’t as revolutionary as the Walkman. But they do make you slap your forehead a little.
A team that lacks a pure goal scorer entered Wednesday ranked first in power play efficiency and sixth in goals scored. They skate. They attack. They take few penalties. They forecheck and backcheck, and do it all for relatively paltry checks, the byproduct of the league’s most anemic payroll (thank you, Atlanta Spirit).
“I think even we’re a little surprised,” Eric Boulton said.
“I’ve talked to a couple of my buddies on other teams after games and they’ll say, ‘You guys were all over us tonight — we didn’t have time to move,’” said Jim Slater, one of only two holdovers (with Boulton) from the franchise’s lone playoff team in 2006-07. “When you hear that from the other team, it means something.”
This recent stretch of nine games, during which the Thrashers have outscored opponents 30-11, might be the best in franchise history. Even Craig Ramsay, the first-year coach, admits he’s surprised how quickly every player has bought in.
Maybe the Thrashers should put him in charge of marketing. They rank 28th in attendance at an announced 11,789 per game, which has fueled rumors of the franchise moving (likely unfounded).
“It’s just like coaching a team,” Ramsay said. “You can’t just make all of those changes in the short term. Our job is to put the best product out there and eventually people will like what they see. There were 6,000 people in Tampa when I went there. Then we won a Stanley Cup when there were probably 25,000 squeezed into that building and another 20,000 outside on the deck. It takes time.”
The problem is trying to recover from so much damage. The newness of an NHL franchise drew fans in the first couple of seasons. The playoff season led to several sellouts and an average of over 16,000 per game. But so many losses, missteps in the draft and free agency and ownership’s seeming ambivalence to do anything about it turned off the old fans and prevented turning on new ones.
Soon, they were off the radar.
Byfuglien, the team’s emerging star, saw this in Chicago. The Blackhawks had so infuriated their fan base that they were being outdrawn by the city’s minor-league team.
“It’s kind of like here,” he said. “It wasn’t the easiest thing to get up and go play in your own barn. It’s like you’re on the road all the time. Sometimes you come in and there’s a lot of the other team’s fans, like in Chicago you’d get more Detroit [fans]. But the change was unreal. We went from 11,000 fans to 21,000 fans. Packed houses all the time.
“It’s definitely hard to come back here [off the road] sometimes. In warm-ups you’re there and you see only a handful of people. But we can’t let that affect how we’re going to play.”
Boulton said he believes fans will return, adding, “The building gets rockin’ when the town’s excited about our club.”
Keep winning and it will happen again. But some damage can’t be overcome quickly.
– By Jeff Schultz
♦
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108 comments Add your comment
Jeff Schultz
December 9th, 2010
8:54 pm
Thanks Brendan.
Cornbread
December 9th, 2010
9:20 pm
Good comments folks. The times they are a changing in Blueland. The hockey world is starting to notice. Very soon everyone else will. Hockey is back in Atlanta.
Thomas
December 9th, 2010
11:41 pm
Dear non hockey fan, just because you don’t like the sport doesn’t mean you should ruin our fun please shut up and save the air you are wasting for somebody who actually is a fan that likes hockey enough to attend a game or new fans who are willing to give it a try .
Dr. Warren
December 10th, 2010
4:48 am
Oops, sorry about that Jeff. I actually even commented on that blog! I hope the pollution here in China is not eroding my memory…
Hole in My Shoe
December 10th, 2010
9:47 am
Dr. Warren: I suggest an evening in one of “clubs” located in Tsim Sha Tsui or Wan Chai to help with your memory lose and to counteract the stinking harbor and smog. The Lithuanians “workers” usually help me better than the others.
Chicago’s problem was old man Wirtz. That and the thrill of going to the old stadium. RIP Pipe Organ. The Thrasher’s attendance it going to hop up. What’s the old saying “American’s like winners”. Don’t forget how close Pittsburgh came to losing their team and now it’s the Steelers’ players calling the Pens players for tickets to a game because they’ve been sold out for like 185 games in a row.
The Red Panty Pirate
December 10th, 2010
11:18 am
“The Red Pantie … So you don’t believe asking the commissioner of a league about whether the franchise is functioning to his satisfaction is relevant? You haven’t been around very much. Commissioners generally will come to owners’ defense. The fact that Gary Bettman would say anything negative is far more than just relevant. Also understand this: When Gary said what he said to me, he was speaking to fan base and owners. That’s how it works. He knew what he was doing.”
OK….I don’t seem to be getting through here. So I’ll break it down a little more:
Bad Thrashers Press In AJC = BAD
Good Thrashers Press In AJC = GOOD
It’s simply disingenuous to spend the bulk of last winter and spring publishing nothing but BAD things about the franchise, which feeds rumors of relocation and turns off casual fans from attending games and can potentially get into the heads of those on the ice, etc and then all of a sudden they win 9 out of 10 games and you are seemingly oblivious to the damage that you personally tried to create. Just Google:
“bettman” “thrashers” “schultz” “ajc”
and you’ll see the ripple effect of your “news story” throughout the sport. On the other hand, the fact that the team actually survived and is doing so well in spite of your relentless attacks last season is evidence that perhaps your opinion doesn’t mean as much as you might think. It’s simply blogger fodder…
Of course Bettman’s opinion of the ASG has some sense of relevancy in a time of slow news or no news….But your TIMIMG last year smacks of a high-schooler scouring the campus to “make” some kind of news out of something that everyone already knows anyway. Has the ASG had problems? Yes. Have these ownership problems directly affected the success of the franchise. Probably. Does the Commissioner think it’s important to resolve these ownership squabbles and problems for the franchise to move forward. Of course. Now did we really need all of that dumped on the scene at a time when the Thrashers went through one of the toughest periods of its existence — the loss of its star player and “face of the franchise”? No, unless you’re a fan of kicking someone when they’re down.
In fact, your knee-jerk reaction to the news that Kovy was being traded was like a a teenage girl whose prom date never showed to pick her up — “He was such a jerk anyway….I never really liked him…..Just look at all of the things wrong with him….He has no redeeming value as a human being!” You trashed the ownership and management and had bloggers ready to march with pitchforks and torches — and I understand that you get paid to do that. But wasn’t it somewhat irresponsible for a journalist? What you never told fans — or you told them it was just one of the excuses we were not to believe — was that Kovy/Grossman had TRULY put the ASG/Thrashers/Fans in a position where it was IMPOSSIBLE to keep him here. Instead, this was your professional take on the situation:
Thrashers blow it with Kovalchuk, as with everything else
6:29 pm February 3, 2010, by Jeff Schultz
Don’t fall for the spin. Don’t fall for, “He’s disloyal,” or, “He’s selfish,” or, “We did everything we could for him.” And please, certainly don’t fall for, “We’re building something special here.”
Then, not to be outdone by yourself, you somehow managed to do the equivalent of wrestling’s pile-driver by announcing the Kovy trade Thurs night and in less than 3 days you went pounding on the Commissioner’s door “demanding answers to some seriously relevant questions!!”
Kovalchuk dealt to New Jersey in sad, expected ending
8:23 pm February 4, 2010, by Jeff Schultz
This is generally how these things end. A star goes one way. A large package of some undetermined substance and quality goes the other.
Bettman wants Thrashers’ owners to get their act together
10:00 am February 7, 2010, by Jeff Schultz
…”So it follows that when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was asked about the myriad problems the league’s Atlanta franchise is having…”
Maybe a bit much a little too soon, don’t you think? And your assertion that Bettman somehow “needed” you in order to give marching orders to the ASG ownership…Are you serious? I may not have been around very much, but I doubt that Gary Bettman — or any other commissioner — requires you or any other columnist to be the conduit that saves a franchise. As someone who has “been around”, you should know that they PREFER to work behind the scenes and keep the league’s internal affairs exactly that — INTERNAL. I’m sure the absolute LAST THING that Gary Bettman wanted less than 3 days after the Kovy trade was you pounding him with questions DESIGNED to give more BAD PRESS to a situation that obviously didn’t need more.
So, if you had it to do over again…..Would you change anything regarding your treatment of the ASG/Thrashers in print last year? Has YOUR opinion of the ASG changed with the team’s recent success? In other words, did they finally get it right this time? Also, how many Thrashers games did yo attend last season? And since you’re a hockey fan, and no hockey fan in their right mind can resist watching GOOD, live hockey…How many games have you been to this year?
ryan
December 10th, 2010
11:48 am
I’m going to the game tonight
Iceman
December 12th, 2010
9:29 am
As Ramsay says, they keep winning, the people will come. No one was going to Capitals games until Ovechkin started making them good. Now they sell out nearly every game.
Keep gettin good, and crowds will grow. Guaranteed.