More photos » by DARRYL DYCK - AP

6 days ago: Vancouver Canucks' Mason Raymond, left, ducks to avoid a slapshot as Atlanta Thrashers' Ondrej Pavelec, of the Czech Republic, makes a blocker save during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Vancouver, British Columbia on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Darryl Dyck)

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The suburban Philadelphia Delaware County Times ran a story by Anthony J. Sanflippo speculating that the Flyers are trying hard to trade for a goalie with a big injury to the Philadelphia starting goaltender Ray Emery.

An inordinate number of visiting scouts were jammed into the press box Thursday to watch two struggling teams in the Flyers and the Senators. While the 16 men representing 14 different organizations could have been there to look at the Sens or just for a night out, there was enough rumbling to think they might be there scouting the Flyers because they are in need of another goalie with Ray Emery on the shelf for at least six weeks.
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Apparently, the sharks are circling around the Flyers. According to another organizational source, the Tampa Bay Lightning, ready to hand their starting job to Antero Niittymaki, contacted the Flyers to gauge their interest in goalie Mike Smith.

Apparently the Flyers are "shocked! shocked!" that other teams in the Eastern Conference would try and screw them over! Let's think about this for a moment. There are 15 teams in the East and just 8 playoff spots. The Devils, Caps and Pens are probably all locks to make the post-season. The Canes and Leafs are probably locks to miss. That means there are 10 East teams fighting for 5 playoff berths. Each team has only a 50% chance of getting in. Guess which teams might have a spare goalie? Atlanta, Islanders and Tampa--all playoff contenders. All three of those teams have a strong self interest in watching the Flyers totally fall out of the playoff race (Flyers currently sit at #11 in the conference standings. If the Flyers do fall out that then leaves 9 teams battling for 5 spots. All the other GMs have to do is just sit back and enjoy the show. Why should they bail out the Flyers who spent big on Pronger and went cheap on goalie depth?

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More photos » by Gerry Broome - AP

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For most of the Atlanta Thrashers franchise history, the goal position has been like a punchline to a bad joke--not really very funny. The team's defense has also been rather porous and the goaltending was unable to stem the tide. That has all changed this season and suddenly the Thrashers have some of the best goaltending in the National Hockey League.

How Many Ways Can I Praise You?

Heading into this season I was a firm advocate of trading Johan Hedberg and going with a one-two tandem of Lehtonen and Pavelec. Heck I was even in favor of keeping Legace over Hedberg. Now I have nothing against Hedberg as a person--by all accounts he is a terrrific human being. But for two seasons in a row Hedberg ranked near the very bottom of all NHL goaltenders in SV% (the best metric for goalies in my view).

Suddenly at age 36 Johan Hedberg is having the best season of his entire NHL career. He currently sits tied for 2nd overall in SV% (.920) and he sports a sparkling 2.24 GAA. The Moose appears to have found the Fountain of Youth! To be honest, such a renaissance at his age is very surprising--I can't explain it, but I'll gladly accept it.  Even better it appears to me that he has a great relationship with rookie Ondrej Pavalec and appears to be helping the young goalie maintain an elite level in the world's toughest hockey league.

What can you say about Ondrej Pavelec? In his previous NHL stints he showed both great promise but also a tendency to over-play pucks which left him vulnerable to easy put-back shots off of rebounds. Pavelec continues to make acrobatic saves and moves, but he looks much calmer in net. I don't know if credit should go to Pavelec, or Coach Weekes, or Hedberg (perhaps a share to all three). To my eyes, Pavelec appears to be a much better goalie in November than he was in October or in previous NHL appearances.

I play a little defense on the ice myself and when defensemen trust their goalie they play one way and when they lack trust they play a different way--the Thrashers defensemen have a lot of trust in Pavelec. They also recognize that he sometimes needs help on goal mouth rebound situations and the D have been very good about covering the far post--I suspect that this is something the coaching staff has stressed. Pavelec and the defense appear to have a good relationship with each other--as opposed to Lehtonen who would sometimes throw tantrums when he was screened or had pucks tipped on him. Pavelec rarely shows irritation with his skaters and they show a lot of confidence in him--it is a subtle thing but it matters.

More photos » by Lynne Sladky - AP

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The Thrashers have excelled at Even Strength so far this season. After the goaltenders, the biggest reason for improvement in ES situations are the two players acquired mid-summer. Nik Antropov has been the Thrashers best forward at ES and Pavel Kubina has been the best defenseman at ES. I've been critical of Don Waddell's free agent acquisitions in past summers but he hit a home run with these two guys. They were precisely what the team needed and as a consequence the Thrashers are much improved.

Forwards

The coaching staff might not like to use terms like "first line" or "third line" but the ES Time On Ice (TOI) paint a rather clear picture. The Russian speaking line of Kovalchuk-Antropov-Afinogenov is clearly #1 in ice time. The next two lines are pretty even Kozlov-White-Little and Kane-Peverley-Armstrong. The 4th line (Boulton-Slater-Thorburn) with Marty Reasoner going back and forth between the 3rd and 4th lines.

Who is facing the toughest opposition? According the Gabe Desjardin's Quality of Competition measure (opponent's Relative Goal Differential at Even Strength) Todd White, Bryan Little Slava Kozlov and Ilya Kovalchuk face the best players, while Boulton, Slater and Thorburn are sheltered.

Who is most effective? At even strength the name of the game is winning on the scoreboard. I have ranked all the players below according to their Goal Differential (GFA-GAA) per 60 minutes of ES TOI. Antropov is your clear leader. Why have the Thrashers gotten so much better this season? Well look at that list of players and you can see that 4 of the 5 most effective ES players were not on this roster one year ago today. Peverley was added in last January an Antropov via Free Agency, Kane at the NHL Draft and Afinogenov was a late NHL Camp tryout. Every single one of those moves has worked out very well!

Another measure to compare players is Desjardins' "Rating" column which compares each players net Goal Differential when that player is on the ice to when that player is off the ice. For example, Ilya Kovalchuk averages a +.59 Goal Differential when he is on the ice, but his Rating is just .01 which means that the Atlanta Thrashers post a+.58 when Kovalchuk is off the ice at ES. On the other hand, the Thrashers do much better when Nik Antropov is on the ice than when he is off it. In fact, when Antropov is off the ice the Thrashers have been out-scored at ES this season--he is only forward for whom that is true.

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One season ago the Thrashers power play finished the season 11th with 69 PP Goals scored. This year the Power Play is ranked 6th and on pace to score 67 Goals (looks like PP% rate is down in the NHL after rising sharply last season).

FORWARDS

Ilya Kovlachuk always plays the point position on the PP so I have put him in the chart with the other defenseman below. There are really six forwards who have seen substantial time on the PP this season. All six are averaging around 3 minutes per game of 5 on 4 time. The Peverly-Antropov-Afinogenov group has been far more effective than the Kozlov-White-Little group so far.

DEFENSE

On the blueline the allocation of ice time is much more uneven. Kovalchuk and Enstrom average nearly 5 minutes per game and Kubina, Bogosian and Hainsey get the leftover scraps basically. Kovalchuk has been on the ice for 14 PP GF which leads the team, but he also gets a load of ice time too.

Who should play with Kovalchuk at the point? So far it has been Enstrom, but Kubina has been the most effective point man (in limited action). The biggest problem with Enstrom is that he is extremely reluctant to shoot--everyone knows he is just trying to feed the puck to Kovalchuk. If I were coach I'd give Kubina and Bogosian more minutes on the PP and tell them to take the open shot. If the other PKers go into man coverage on Kovalchuk, then it becomes a 4 on 3 and the Thrashers must become better at exploiting the open man--whomever is open must be willing to shoot the puck.

CONCLUSION

The Thrashers really need to get Kozlov and Little going in the 2nd half to keep that PP rolling. Some tweaks on the blueline such as more ice time for shooters like Kubina and Bogosian might help as well.

One year ago the Thrashers PK allowed 88 goals against. So far this year, the team has allowed just 17 on 107 times being shorthanded.

The data in the table below in ONLY for PK during 5 on 4 disadvantage (excludes 5 on 3 situations). Among the forwards, the coaching staff is leaning most heavily on Reasoner, Peverley, Thorburn and Armstrong. This represents a major change from last season when the top 4 PK forwards included Reasoner, Perrin, Slater and C. Stuart.

Who has been most effective so far? When looking at Even Strength situations I put a lot of weight on Goal Differential, but on the PK scoring is an afterthought (and often involves a lot of luck), so I put greater emphasis on the PK GAA (Goals Against Average). Bottom line, the job of the PK unit is to prevent a goal against.

In the table below I have ranked all the Thrasher forwards who average at least half a minute on the PK in the order of their PK GAA. Rich Peverley has not only lead the Thrashers in points on offense but he currently sports the lowest PK GAA of any forward who plays the PK on a regular basis. Right behind Peverley is Chris Thorburn who has excelled so far this season after being given a bigger role in killing penalties. In the middle of the pack we find surprising rookie Evander Kane, Colby Armstrong and veteran PKer Marty Reasoner. Trailing behind in effectiveness are Jim Slater and Todd White who have each seen their PK minutes decline this year.

On defense, the guys receiving the heaviest PK burden are Ron Hainsey, Pavel Kubina and Zach Bogosian in that order. Last season Tobias Enstrom was the Thashers leading PK defenseman but this year he has seen his PK TOI cut back significantly with the arrival of Kubina and Schubert and with more minutes going to Bogosian.

In his reduced role Enstrom has been nothing short of perfect. In fact, so far the this season when killing 5 on 4 penalties the Thrashers have actually outscored the opposition 1-0 when Enstrom is on the ice--that's rather amazing.

Among the non-Enstrom defenseman new comer Pavel Kubina has the best PK GAA with Popovic right behind him. Bogosian and Hainsey bring up the rear. It is worth noting that the spread among the defensemen is much smaller than it is among the forwards, which suggests that all of the defenseman have been reasonably effective on the PK so far this year.

We're rather busy at the home offices this week. Thrashers-Leafs kicks off very soon, but we couldn't resist the urge to insert the "lowly" into the thread title after years of digs from North of the Border. The shoe is on the other foot today.

X Marks the Spot

Tonight Garnet Exelby plays against the team that drafted. I've written plenty on XLB's deficiencies, so let me say something positive. He's one guy who always gave it his all and was good teammate and excellent with fans in Atlanta. If character alone won hockey games, Exelby might be an All-Star.

Antropov and Kubina Return

The other story line is Nik Antropov going up against the club that drafted and developed him into a NHL player. Kubina and Antropov have been a perfect fit in Atlanta (I'll post about that later this week). They have supplied precisely what the Thrashers have lacked--size and ability to control the puck in key moments.

Road Warriors

The Thrashers have lost just 2 times in regulation on the road. Astonishing. Can they keep it up?

Leaf Nation

If you want to look in on the enemy go here. The Leafs fans make so many comments they sometimes often have separate posts for each period of a game.

Puck Daddy wrote a piece on the "10 Best GMs of the Last Decade" which is pretty good. I've enjoyed his retrospective series on big stories of the 2000s. My biggest complaint about the list is the omission of David Poile who is nothing short of amazing in terms of contending on a budget. Rather than just complain about Puck Daddy's list, I've decided to come up with a list of my own. I will rank all 30 organizations over the last decade (as opposed to individual GMs) to see which ones were the best managed in that time frame. I will use two criteria 1) salary efficiency and 2) post-season success.

Salary Efficiency Rankings

Every GM competes against every other GM to build a team that can accumulate enough points to qualify for the post-season. The very best organizations get the most for their money. Some organizations bludgeoned their way to the post-season by out-spending the rest of the NHL on a 2-to-1 basis pre-lockout. Other organizations were extremely careful with their money and still qualified for the post-season. I prefer to give credit to those organizations that received the biggest return on their payroll investment. So the first ingredient is regular season salary efficiency which is basically Total Points Accumulated 2000-2010 divided by Total Accumulated Payroll 2000-2010. (For the 2009-2010 season I used projected final point standings and projected final salary numbers from www.capgeek.com).

So which teams have gotten the most for their money? (See the chart below.) The Nashville Predators not only lead this list but have a huge margin over the #2 team. David Poile is simply a master at contending on a small budget (doing it again this year after a rough start). The top three organizations in Wins/Payroll are Predators, Wild and Senators. Most of these teams are clubs that had small payrolls over the last decade. At the bottom are the NY Rangers--which should come to no one's surprise to anyone who followed the team pre-lockout.

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