Rising Stars in Blueland

Good teams send people to All-Star games and this past weekend Atlanta sent a lot of people to two benign but still vaguely prestigious All-Star games. The NHL All-Star completely re-invented itself thanks to the playground element of two captains picking teams and as happens in these situations the pre-game weekend was a lot more compelling than the actual game, but nobodies criticising these guys for having a little fun (or playing no defence). The Thrashers only had one guy on the ice thanks to Toby Enstrom’s recent injury but number 33 fully deserved his place on Team Lidstrom because he has been, well, awesome! Dustin Byfuglien arrived in Atlanta in the off season shortly after spending his first with Lord Stanley, something I’m sure his mother never thought would be written. After watching the NHL’s ‘Fantasy Draft’ I am fully convinced that Buff isn’t fully human, there has to be some sasquatch blood in his family somewhere, the guy is huge! Not just ripped huge or superficially big, like a lot of the goalies, Buff looks a bigger man than any other player on the All Star roster. It is partly his size that makes him so much fun; he shoots that puck as hard as anyone in the game (apart from 2 individuals if you’re ranking this by the skills context Saturday night) and his boarding is included in the dictionary description of brutal.

Let’s just do a quick statistical break down of Buff’s ranking against other defensemen in the NHL he is-

· 1^st in Games Played-52

· 1^st in Goals Scored-16

· 12^th in Assists-25

· 4^th in Total Points-41

· 1^st in Game Winning Goals-6

So in other words even the numbers prove that Byfuglien is one of the best defensemen in the entire National Hockey League. The statistic of those 5 that interests me the most is the number of game winning goals that Buff has scored, the six he has are 4 more than anyone of the Thrashers where his closest competitors are Anthony Stewart, Rich Peverley and Alex Burmistrov who all have 2. This is from a guy who has been with the Thrashers under a year! Let’s just compare Buffs impact compared to the ‘star’ of the last few years. Ilya Kovalchuck played 79 games for the Thrashers in 08-09 and only just managed to match Buff’s 6 game winning goals, last season when Kovalchuck played 49 games before heading north and achieved only 3 game winning goals, that’s right 3!

The star situation is a perfect example of the new Thrashers mentality. The two stars on this 2010-2011 season team are Dustin Byfuglien, who moved to play defence when he arrived in Atlanta and Ondrej Pavelec, the net minder. This comes after trading away the one trick scoring pony that nearly drove the franchise into the ground that, coincidently, happened to play offence and exactly 0.3% defence. The switch from offensive concentration to a more defensive focus is the kind of refreshing that this Thrashers organisation hasn’t experienced for a long time. When the team regularly languished towards the bottom of the NHL standings it was while Kovalchuck was scoring between 60 and 90 points a season, 60-90 points that included nearly 50% goals. Now the new regime that includes both Coach Ramsay and General Manager Rick Dudley is focused much more on character guys who want to help the team win, that’s Byfuglien and Pavelec are the stars and someone like Andrew Ladd is the captain.

Just to make sure everyone understands the point of team for the Thrashers organisation, Ben Wright the Thrashers website coordinator tweeted last night:

“Buff was texting back and forth with Toby Enstrom between periods and told him he wished he was here.”

That my friends is the sound of a case resting. Thanks by the way to @inaneenglish for the Ben Wright tweet, a much better writer and immensely more avid hockey fan than I and well worth some effort to read.

Wednesday I’ll hit some of the Falcons players that featured in the intramural flag football game that masqueraded as the 2011 Pro Bowl. Also worth noting that two weeks today the Braves pitchers and catchers will be reporting to Orlando for the first official day of Spring Training, it will also coincide with the beginning of the 2011 Big Braves Blog where I profile each position in more dorky detail than you could ever imagine!

Zero Hero

Apologies for the absence earlier this week, it’s been a pretty busy week visiting relatives at the other end of the country is actually quite time consuming. It also means that any in depth posting has not been done, in its place this will be a quick Daytona style race around the Thrashers and Hawks games last night one which was more successful than the other. The Hawks headed up to Milwaukee to face the Bucks while the Thrashers stayed home to shut out the Capitals. Oops did I just spoil the ending, well seeing as I already mentioned it...

THE THRASHERS SHUT-OUT THE WASHINGTON CAPITALS! I just had to put that in capitals (no pun intended) just to make sure I realised that it really happened. It was just the Thrashers fifth win in seventeen games, a slide that has seen them holding a one point lead over the Carolina Hurricanes for the final play-off spot. The Thrashers had been outscored 13-5 in their last three losses including the 7-1 embarrassment at the hands of Tampa Bay in Sunday afternoon. With Ovechkin and the Capitals occupying the fifth seed spot this was another tough one of the slumping Thrashers who were just hoping to get to the All-Star break in the play-off picture. Thanks to another outstanding performance by Ondrej Pavalec the Thrashers painted themselves back into that picture just in the nick of time. Before the game it came out that All-Star defenseman Tobias Enstrom would miss two-to-four weeks with a broken finger that meant, combined with Evander Kane still not being able to go, it was a pretty under strength Atlanta team that took the ice against the Caps. Well nobody told Pavs that. He made 36 saves for his third shut-out of the season and, once again, was the Thrashers saviour. Nobody needed a big game more than Pavalec who was slumping as bad as the team and had lost his reliable back up thanks to Chris Masons injury. It’s no secret the esteem that I hold Pavalec in and believe that he should at least have been considered for the All-Star game, he wasn’t and it’s actually great news, he really needs the rest. As do the rest of the team who now have the opportunity to rest up and try and get fresh for the stretch run. If they can get anywhere close to how they played at the beginning of the year we could see a richly deserved postseason appearance.

The Hawks weren’t quite as lucky as their icy brethren, losing in the icier climes of Wisconsin against a short-handed Bucks team. The best news for Atlanta was the return of Al Horford and Marvin Williams. Al started and played an astounding 39 minutes, finishing with 17 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists. It has been my theory for a long time that the Hawks actually made a mistake in the summer by paying superstar money for an above average guard in Joe Johnson, I wasn’t exactly the only one of this opinion. Instead of spending the money on a 19-4-5 guy who, as we know too well struggles in the brightest lights, the $16,000,000 could have been used to surround Al Horford and Josh Smith with a high quality supporting cast and make them the stars. Smith has put up 16-8.8-3.5 this year which are career numbers while Horford is at 16-9.8-3.5, if you surrounded these two with another big man, Chris Kaman from the Clippers has been mentioned, and another pure facilitator, think Rajon Rondo but a convenience store version and suddenly that becomes potentially shut down D and explosive offence. As it is Al and Smoove are shrunk to be supporting players to Johnson who, as a side note, scored 15 points with 2 rebounds and 1 assist. The Hawks fell flat in crunch time in what Larry Drew called a “total collapse”, hardly a ringing endorsement of the team ahead of the Knicks coming into the ATL Friday night.

I never intended this to turn into an anti-Joe piece, it just happens at times. Save my seat on the Johnson shaped bandwagon though, just in case he lights it up Friday.

Statement!

Finally the Hawks make a statement! It has taken what seems years for the Hawks to genuinely announce themselves as a NBA title contender but last night, in the shade of the palm trees, the Atlanta Hawks dispatched a Miami Heat team consisting of two thirds of the big three, the best two thirds by the way. It didn’t come the way that you’d expect either. The Hawks have always been a very fine offensive team, with players like Joe Johnson and Josh Smith it’s pretty easy to be, but last night the Hawks won on the back of their defence. Had it not been for a desperation buzzer beater they would have held the Heat to a single digit point total in the first period. They accumulated 33 defensive rebounds, have 8 steals and 2 blocks and, perhaps most importantly, forced the Heat into 16 turnovers. To do this to a team that had LeBron James scoring 34 points and Dwayne Wade scoring 27 should not be ignored because they did it without the interior defence of Al Horford who sprained his ankle early in the third quarter, he ended up playing only 21 minutes.

This game also showed us exactly what Larry Drew’s sharing offence could really achieve. The offence doesn’t entail any of the team’s stars to actually be stars, although it does help when Joe Johnson scores 30+ points or Josh Smith grabs a double double. At AmericanAirlines Arena last night no Hawks player scored 20 points but the team, as a whole, had 20 assists. The best points total for the Hawks was 19 which was shared by JJ and Jamal Crawford, who played 32 minutes off the bench, Josh Smith did have a double double, scoring 15 and grabbing 12 boards.

In games decided by 5 points or less the Hawks are now 8-4 on the season and in their last 10 games they are 8-2 and now only 2 games out of the lead in the South East Division and 4 and a half back on the Boston Celtics in the Eastern conference standings. They have the fourth best conference record at 18-8 and win both in the Phillips Arena where they are 14-6 while being 14-9 on the road. If you cast your mind back just several weeks when everyone was giving up on the Hawks as unchanged from the days of Mike Woodson, well they are changed, they are better and with displays like last night possibly, very possibly a genuine title contender.

Blue Monday

So this is what a black hole looks like huh? Even though the Hawks and Thrashers are both well in the middle of their respective play-off pictures the losses Saturday night felt like they had bigger meaning, they hurt slightly worse than the other 20-30 losses they will pick up this year. It didn’t help that the Thrashers lost their fourth straight and had to stare at Kari Lehtonen holding them to one goal in the process, for the Hawks it didn’t help that after winning 10 straight at Phillips they laid an egg against an ailing Rockets team in a game that, until the last two minutes, they could so easily have one. For the teams that inhabit the birds nest that is Phillips Arena it wasn’t any worse than any other bad day but, like the very real shadow cast by the Georgia Dome over downtown Atlanta, the Falcons cast the metaphorical shadow over the Atlanta sports landscape with one of the most embarrassing play-off capitulations in recent memory.

Of course it’s not particularly fun to write about, read about or watch and, unless anybody out there wants to offer to pay me to write about it, I’m just gonna try and manoeuvre around the falcon shaped elephant in the room. The performance of the team was about as bad as it could have been and, having avoided all benefits of the 21^st century on Sunday in order to create an organic game day atmosphere, could not have pissed me off anymore than it did. Games like that created alcoholism. Anyway whilst the Falcons flopped the fans inside the Dome did the city of Atlanta. The city has been hammered for being a city of transplants, for lacking a sporting identity and, most seriously, of fans simply not caring. The Braves did a pretty good job of rebuffing those accusations with the ‘Bobby Cox weekend’ and the following play-off series, even the Thrashers have done a pretty good job of filling seats on a couple of occasions, but the Falcons fans on Saturday night proved that Atlanta fans have heart and will do anything for their teams. The two marketing efforts have the Falcons have run with this year have been the ‘Rise Up’ campaign and, more recently, the ‘Project 115’. Having gone to 111.4 decibels in Week 10 against the Ravens, in the week leading up to the Packers play-off game the organisation challenged Falcons fans to raise that noise level to 115 decibels, the significance of 115 being the date of the game 1/15, clever huh? Well the fans came through when the players couldn’t, the Dome reached 117.8 decibels when the Brent Grimes recovered Greg Jennings fumble in the first quarter of play. This was the second highest recorded noise level in the Dome since reaching 117.9 on October 12^th, 2008 against the Chicago Bears. Oh yeah Matt Ryan threw 2 interceptions and had a rating of 69.0, Michael Turner rushed for 39 yards on 10 carries and defence gave up nearly 50 points “defending the Dome”. How was that in depth recap for y’all?

Two little odds and ends to finish a pretty depressing Monday post. Firstly did anyone notice the irony of the logo on Green Bay’s putting a whipping on the Falcons? This is the same ‘Power-G’ that the Packers have shared with none other than the Georgia Bulldogs since the 1960’s. Maybe next time it will be the Dawgs scoring 48 points in the Dome.

Secondly I just finished my applications for Grad school and just wanted to see where everyone thought the best landing spot would be. I applied to the Universities of Georgia and Alabama and also Georgia State University. Where do you guys think would be best Atlanta, Athens or Tuscaloosa?

Sole Focus

With the Snowpocalypse extinguishing all signs of life in downtown Atlanta there has been very little action on either court or rink but this, somewhat conveniently, has turned attention solely to the ominous structure behind Phillips Arena that, come Saturday, will host the cities first NFL play-off game since 2004. While it would have been nice to have had the Seattle Seahawks coming into the Dome this week it will instead be the Green Bay Packers making their second appearance in Arthur Blanks house this year. I thought that, without being able to effectively gauge the interest and feeling of the city given my current distance, it would be interesting to see how the Smith/Dimitroff Falcons have fared numerically against the Cheeseheads.

Since Dimitroff and Smith took charge in Atlanta the Falcons have faced Green Bay twice, once earlier this season inside the Dome and once in 2008 at Lambeau Field and have a 2-0 record against them notching two three point wins Mike McCarthy’s men, 27-24 in 2008 and 17-20 in November. In both games Matt Ryan, Michael Turner and Roddy White were all central to the Falcons victory with Turner and White being the outstanding performers once a piece.

Going chronologically I’ll go through how the team did in 2008 and then in late November. At Lambeau in ’08 Matt Ryan, in his rookie year, completed 61% of his passes for a pretty inconsequential 194 yards with 2 touchdowns and 1 pick. It wasn’t that Ryan played badly he was just efficient which, at that point of his career, was exactly what the Falcons were asking from Matty Ice. So Ryan did a good job and played his part in Coach Smiddy’s game plan, Turner was the game changer this time around thanks to gaining 121 yards on 26 carries while going in for one touchdown. This was during a period that Turner was at his dominant burning best and on the road at Lambeau it is understandable that Smith and the Falcons rode the hot run game with the Falcons as a team running for an average of 4.9. Roddy White also worked well against the Packers secondary grabbing eight passes for 132 yards and a touchdown, which was more reflective of the restrictions put on Ryan than on White.

Come 2010 the story wasn’t particularly different. Turner and his offensive line were once again dominant with Burner carrying the ball 23 times for 110 times and a touchdown for a 4.8 yard average. Ryan was again limited passing for only 197 yards this time but completing an incredibly 85% of his passes going 24 for 28 with a touchdown and no picks. Tony Gonzalez led the Dirty Birds in receptions and yards with 6 catches and 51 yards but he was actually targeted less than White. Roddy had 7 targets but only had 5 catches compared to Gonzalez’s 6 targets.

While the Falcons have seemingly tuned their game to beating the Packers they now have to plan for a run game that Green Bay is displaying for the first time. In 2008 Green Bay only managed to 104 yards on the ground before gaining even less in Atlanta this year, the Pack posting 77 yards on the ground at the Georgia Dome. In both games the Falcons have given Aaron Rodgers plenty of opportunities to beat them seeing him throw for 313 and 344 yards respectively it is pretty clear he has the birds’ number. What cannot be allowed to happen on Saturday is for the Packers ground game to beat the Falcons, if Rodgers throws for 400 yards and 5 touchdowns accept that that’s what he does, allowing James Starks to go off like he did against the Eagles would be unacceptable for the Falcons. Regardless of what happens and whether they win or not Saturday night should be an occasion for Atlantans to enjoy and maybe, just maybe, get used too.

A Long Weekend

After starting out with such promise the Atlanta Thrashers have hit a considerable road bump as of late that has apparently shaken their confidence and penalty kill in equal measure. Since we last spoke the Blue Birds have lost two out of three games whilst being outscored 15-9, that’s an average of 5 goals conceded over that period with Ondrej Pavelec in net for most of that time (more on him later). An alarming stat I saw is that in the two losses, to Carolina and Toronto respectively, the Thrashers have conceded 7 power play goals which even a relative hockey novice like myself knows is not a good thing. I’m sure someone with a better understanding of the game will be able to explain why the Thrashers have struggled so mightily when facing superior numbers against these two teams but, to the untrained eye over here at Birds and Braves, this penalty capitulation coincides with Coach Ramsay having to deal for the first time this season with a raft of injuries, the latest of which has seen Evander Kane heading to injured reserve. The constant line shifting and player movement appears to have upset what was becoming great chemistry in the Thrashers locker room. This is not to say that players suddenly don’t like each other but, when faced with playing next to an unfamiliar face, players tend to alter their games just a tiny bit to make up for the unfamiliarity, this happens in any sport. The best thing Ramsay can do to rectify the struggling penalty kill D is practice and lots of it!

The other issue that seems to have arisen from the ashes of the lost weekend is the toll this season has put on Pavelec. This is a net minder that slid from second best Goals Against Average in the league last week to now sitting at number nine on that same list. Before Friday night Pavelec’s save percentage in individual games had been below .900 only five times: November 11^th against Pittsburgh and then four times in December on the 2^nd, 10^th, 23^rd and 28^th twice against those same Penguins and once each against Boston and Colorado. Friday and Sunday marked the first time this year he was sub-.900 in consecutive games with Friday being the low point when he only managed a .792 mark. In my mind a lot of Pav’s horror weekend can be attributed to his heroic season prior to seeing the Maple Leafs. I am going to fully honest and admit I haven’t been able to apply the eyeball test to Pavelec as much as I would have liked but statistics do tell a lot of the story (as all Baseball fans will tell you). Currently Ondrej has faced 977 shots in 31 appearances on the ice which is the fifth most in the NHL, his save percentage against this bombardment sits at second whilst he is fifteenth amongst goalies in time on the ice. Basically Pavelec is being worked harder in less time than 90% of the other goalies in the NHL and also working a lot better than 98% of them. Having seen some of the performances he has produced this season, the win against Washington on December 4^th springs to mind, it is important for Craig Ramsay to make sure his potential superstar healthy and fresh until April in order to keep the Birds in the play-off picture. Health providing, and this weekend notwithstanding, Pavelec should still be on the cusp of joining and short list in the long debate for who is the best goalie in the NHL.

Down Payment?

Just when I was about to get into the Hawks and Thrashers in something approaching detail I was ambushed, blindsided really, by Frank Wren and his band of highway attention grabbers down Capitol Avenue. After completing their winter business at the back end of fall the Braves front office then completed the big task of October 2011 in January, only 10 months ahead of time. By signing Dan Uggla to a whopping 5 year, $62 million deal the team has, to all intents and purposes, tied its immediate future to; A) A 38-year-old third baseman returning from blowing out his ACL, B) A young offensive catcher who has had eye problems, C) A 31 year-old power hitting second baseman and D) A potentially dominant starting rotation. If all goes to plan for the Braves Chipper Jones will return from his serious knee injury and be the offensive force he hasn’t been since 2008, Brian McCann will fully develop into a .300/20/90 middle of the line up hitter who improves his defence, Dan Uggla will produce like he did in 2010 for at least four years of his contract and finally that Tim Hudson repeats his 2010, Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens continue developing into superstar pitchers and Derek Lowe is the D-Lowe of September and October and not the months preceding it. Should the plan fail the organisation will have mortgaged its future to aging hitters and unproven young pitchers. Frank Wren will either come out of the next two to three years looking like a genius or looking like a man without a job.

The contract that Wren awarded to Uggla does bring about some interesting questions about players who have actually played in a Braves uniform before. If a 31 year-old Uggla who is a career .263 hitter then what is someone like Martin Prado worth to the Braves organisation. In two full seasons in the Braves line-up Prado has been hit .307 while being the most flexible player in the organisation, playing every position on the infield and now moving to the outfield to accommodate the newly arrived Uggla. This year is Prado first arbitration year and, should it end in court, will be his first receiving a pretty large pay rise, and one that he has fully earned in his five years with the team. Prado is just one of a handful of players also including Jason Heyward, Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens that the team could soon have to make a decision on: extend long term and pay the price or potentially lose stars of the next 10 years without getting the most out of them. We saw what happened for the Texas Rangers when they acquired half of the farm system, this cannot happen again.

The Hawks managed to squeeze another road game onto the schedule while on their western trip, and like against the Clippers Sunday they managed to pull out another tough win this time against the floundering Kings. For the first time really in quite a long time Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Al Horford and Jamal Crawford all played well on the same night. Crawford dropped 31 points, JJ had 29, Smoove had another double double while Al came up big on the defensive end. It was really an evening when the Hawks executed Coach Drew’s game plan offensively and managed to hang on at the other end of the court. Crawford’s second big night in two games once again raises questions in my mind as to who should start at point guard from now on. I understand the nature of Mike Bibby’s role and why he continues to get more minutes but the team simply seems to respond better to Crawford being at the point. It would certainly be interesting to see how it would work should Larry Drew give Jamal some time in a starting role.

The Hawks complete their four game road trip tonight with a tough one against a very talented Utah Jazz team, after that they will play four of five back at Phillips where they have won 9 straight games. The Thrashers also head back to the ice down in the Sunshine State in what could be a pretty important divisional match up. Hopefully the couple days of rest and chance to get some real practice will have helped Coach Ramsay to have reproduced the fluidity and style with which the team was playing with a week or two ago.

I’m not sure if I’ll get anything down this Friday but I hope to until them however I still no real sign off so y’all make one up for yourselves!

Number 1!

When I was considering what to begin my very first B&B post with it really wasn’t too hard, I mean who would have thought that Atlanta would have a number 1 play-off seed in 2010. Ok technically 2011. After pummelling the woeful Carolina Panthers 31-3 (I refuse to acknowledge the Panthers ultimate garbage time touchdown) the Falcons completed their best regular season since 2004 by clinching a first round bye in the NFL play-offs. They didn’t destroy the Panthers in the way teams like the Patriots destroy inferior opponents, but the Falcons aren’t like that, they just strangled the life out of Carolina in ways previously unseen in the Dome, maybe outside of the SEC Championship. The best thing is that this team, unlike previously successful Falcons teams, isn’t reliant on one or two star attractions and, before anyone invokes the names of Ryan, White and Turner; none of them are anywhere the level of stardom that old number 7 achieved in his time in the A. This is a team built on the likes of center Todd McClure, defensive tackle Jonathan Babineaux and offensive guard Harvey Dahl, genuinely old school, hardnosed tough guys. Ryan, White and Turner simply provide a very big, very tasty cherry on the top.

Ryan however is the face of the franchise, one who one day may become a Brady or Manning but is still in the very early stages of what should be a very long career. Early in his career he has most often been compared to the former Volunteer currently residing in Indianapolis and on his way to the Hall of Fame, the Manning brother whom people actually call Manning. In Peyton’s first 3 years in the league he was markedly similar to our own Matty Ice. In his rookie year Manning completed 56% of his passes compared too Ryan’s 61%, Peyton attempted about 140 passes more than Ryan which may be an early indicator of the type of quarterback number 2 will become. Matt’s third season also compares well to that of Manning; Ryan’s rating currently sits at 91.0 with 3705 yards, a 62.5 completion percentage, 28 touchdowns and 9 interceptions, Peyton had a rating of 94.7, 4413 yards, 62.5 completion percentage, 33 touchdowns and 15 picks. Again less yards from less attempts but as far as rating and completion % goes Thomas Dimitroff should be feeling very smug about his 2008 draft pick.

If the Falcons advance deep into the play-offs they may well have a chance to exercise a demon from the past in Michael Vick. Should the Falcons and Eagles advance in the manner they are expected too then the Dome could well be welcoming back the team’s fallen icon in the biggest game since the 1999 Super Bowl. Should this happen I think it would a pretty safe bet that a large proportion of the fans in the Dome would be sporting those old number 7 jersey’s that still populate large parts of downtown Atlanta on any given day. What Matt Ryan has given the franchise and the fan base is the opportunity to move on from those perceived halcyon days. Regardless of whether the season ends in Dallas or the Dome Falcons fans should remember the foundation that 2011 has built for the franchise. Some time before their first play-off game on the 15^th I will try and figure out exactly what the identity of this team is and exactly what it means to the city, but for now can’t we just enjoy the feeling of being the number 1 team in the NFC a position that all of us in Atlanta should start getting used to.

Last night I finally got to watch my first Hawks game of the season thanks, in a large part, because ESPN UK hasn’t found the Hawks that big of a draw; much like the fans at Phillips Arena. What I saw was that, despite winning a tough game on the road against a very spirited Clippers team, there are a whole lot of holes in this team that simply shouldn’t be there at this point in its development. There were so many mistakes made last night that are simple mental errors and moments of pure laziness. As much as Hawks fans would like to see the Atlanta Spirit out as owners nobody wants to see someone like Blake Griffin conducting such a hostile takeover like Blake did in the first quarter Sunday. They eventually managed to pull out a gutsy win thanks to a 37-24 fourth quarter that was a significant part of big second halves from Joe Johnson who had 17 second half points, Josh Smith who had 18 and Al Horford’s 18. The lack of focus and energy in the first half is something that I’m sure some of the players will blame on the travel but something that should be an increasing concern for Larry Drew.

The Thrashers also picked up a pretty big win on the road north of the border in the Centre Bell. Once again it was the new superstar in Atlanta Dustin Byfuglien that pulled out the big overtime goal for the Thrashers that moved them to 21-15-6 overall. Despite another huge goal from big Buff it was a game won on the back of another monumental effort from rising star goaltender Ondrej Pavelec. The fact that Pavs has conceded a few more goals in his last few games, raising his goals against average to a slightly more realistic 2.14 which is now only third best in the league, he is still the key to what Craig Ramsay and the Thrashers organisation are hoping to achieve in the long term. Pavelec made 47 saves in a game that the Thrashers were outshot 50-28, a ridiculous difference given the Thrashers position in the standings and one that really needs to improve. It might be a consequence of having Byfulgien on the defensive end or just an area that the team needs to work on, regardless of the reason Pavelec, who is 14-8-4 on the year, could easily be solely responsible for maybe 5 to 10 victories so far this year.

I apologise for not getting to as much Hawks and Thrashers at I would have liked but the Falcons had to take priority because of the nature of their success. I promise that come Wednesday I will go Thrash and Hawk heavy and should be able to stay that way until maybe the middle of next week.

In the absence of a catchy sign off I’ll just say if you are amongst the 4 people who will read this first go around; see ya Wednesday.

A Brief Encounter

A New Year, a new blog with a new purpose. After spending the first two years of my blogging life hitting various points all over the sporting landscape it all became a little bit disjointed and, to be brutally honest, a little boring for reader and writer. After some time thinking and taking a break from writing my scatterbrained narrative I settled on an idea that, hopefully, will be more interesting for everyone involved. Whether the title I have chosen is all that original or not I think it serves its purpose, for 2011 I will be exclusively entering the world of empty seats and watching the Birds and Braves of Atlanta, Georgia. The Braves, Falcons, Hawks and Thrashers all mean different things to different people across the Metro area and my intention is to try and respond in both an analytical and fanatical manner whilst trying to keep everything in perspective to anything and everything involving these four teams. I hope anyone reading this blog will enjoy what I have to say, even if you don't agree with it; I would love you to correct any errors in judgement I have. To finish this short introduction I would just like to confirm I love the city of Atlanta and love all of its sports franchises, empty seats and all. I intend to post every Monday and Wednesday along with most Fridays so, until Monday, here's to a happy, healthy and ring filled 2011.