With the trading season opened up the always active Atlanta Thrashers have made a couple bold transactions and have re-shaped the whole organization..
With a definite need to get some scoring in town this season with Ovechkin's bush league re-rate the team felt ok sending two good young nhl'ers in Kevin Shattenkirk and Derek Stepan to Minnesota for a budding NHL STAR in Chris Stewart.. With his solid ratings a lot will be expected of Stewart in his 2nd tour of duty in Atlanta...
The second deal saw the Capitals send Patrice Bergeron, John Moore, Washington 2nd, 6th, 7th Devils 6th this year and Washington 1st next year to Atlanta. The Thrashers sent Martin Hanzal, Andrew Cogliano, Peter Holland, Taylor Beck, and 1.5 million to Washington.
The teams G.M had this to say about the deals, "We really hated seeing young talented players like Shattenkirk, Stepan, Hanzal, Cogliano, Holland, and Beck leave our organization, but we had some holes in our top 6 forwards and bringing in Stewart and Bergeron we have got two guys who will be in our top 6 for a while. Stewart is someone we really made a mission to bring back his 5 yr 3.25mill deal then RFA status at the end of it is one of the best contracts in our league and he is a budding Jarome Iginla clone.. In Patrice we get the best faceoff guy we've seen for next year and has great all around ratings PH-SC-DF-PA-SK we are excited to see where he can slot in for our squad on either the 2nd line with R.Nash or top line with Ovie.
Our current lines look like
Ovechkin-Bergeron-Stewart-Chara-Byfuglien
Nash-Tavares-Hemsky-E.Johnson-J.Corvo
Voracek-C.Wilson-Macarthur-Smid-Peckham
Dadonov-Galiardi-Calvert
R.Miller and J.Hedberg in goal..
for the AHL squad we got
Center- C.Van De Velde, J.Anderrson, C.Almond, Z.Hamill, D.Grant, K.Nagy
With potential room to move Dadonov and Calvert to our AHL squad and hopefully some cap space after the RFA process we hope to ice a very solid team for this season with a potential UFA addition our two to our bottom 6 or bottom 2 defense.. With only 18 players that have to be on our pro squad we feel confident also about snagging a solid player via the waiver process..
other notable prospect's in the organization from previous draft years include, A.Lee, A.Lander, D.Kristo, J.DeSerres, J.Lehtera, M.Hoeffel, W.Wrenn, T.Doherty, V.Ekbom. With alot of other varying guys who are just starting AHL careers in real life..
With the draft coming up the team is very excited about holding 27 picks currently the number 18-23-43-44-49-73-77-Atl 4, St.l 4, SJ 4,LA 4, Nsh 5, StL 5, Pit 5, Dal 5, Ott 5, Van 5, Atl 6, Wash 6, Nj 6, LA 6, StL 6, Car 6, Car 7, Atl 7, Wash 7, Fla 7. Also the team now has 2 1st's for next year as well with their own pick and Washington's. We feel confident about snagging a prospect or ten that can help our Thrashers hopefully we are able to pull a double hatrick with 6 cups in a row in a few years 3 as the Thrashers and 3 as the Jets
