Atlanta 2 - New York Rangers 1 SO
First home game of the year, first back from a very unsuccessful roadtrip. Despite the threat of snow and ice, I shuffled my ass down to the arena to see if maybe the team could turn fortunes around on home ice.
The Thrashers came out strong and controlled a good portion of early play. If not for the superb play of New York's rookie goaltender and a couple of goalposts, the Thrashers might have scored 2 or 3 goals. Instead they headed for the lockerroom tied at 0-0.
New York sees a bit of jump in the second period and manages to create a nice deflection in front the net to give them a 1-0 lead.
Neither team generates much offense for the remainder of the contest making for quite a boring affair. While it was nice to see the Thrashers play some sound defense for a change, I was worried the good play might be wasted. But with a little more than 6 minutes remaining, Slater broke free and brought the arena to its feet when he scored.
From that point it seemed both teams were content to get to OT and get at least a single point. Once in OT the Thrashers looked like a team worried they were going to lose instead of playing to win. The Rangers had multiple opportunities but simply couldn't cash in. The game was headed to the shootout.
While superstars Kovalchuk couldn't deliver in the shootout, specialist Kozlov did. Add another by Little and a few saves by Hedberg and the Thrashers managed to beat the Rangers once more. With 3 wins in 3 tries against the boys from New York, it is a shame they can't play them more often.
Not much better than beating the Rangers!
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