Whatever Ramsay was doing over the past few days, please keep doing! Though we still walked away with total shots on goals down in the low 30s, the guys on the ice last night played like a team. Puck handling was so much more consistent, especially in the third.
Ron Hainsey showed his dedication to the team and flew back out to Anaheim to make sure he was there to play the game after his baby was born and Chris Thorburn was able to add another game to his games with a goal scored this season.
Hands down, the most amazing player of the night and definitely deserving of the first star, Anthony Stewart who, just 17 seconds into the game showed he was in this one to win it with the first goal of the game and ended up walking away with the Thrashers first Hat trick of the season, tying up the game in the 3rd and bringing on overtime.
I was very curious to see how we would handle ourselves in OT. Last year was rather traumatic whenever we pushed ourselves into that corner. We made it through, looking ok, I think there were too many shots on goal by Anaheim, but we got it into a shootout.
With so many new players on our team I was rather excited to get the opportunity to see how we did on the shootout. While I do think that Ramsay may have played it safe with his initial players and rather shocked that Stewart did not make his way into the first slot, I was still eager to see how Ramsay played it. Nigel Dawes followed up Brian Little’s miss with the game winning goal!
More than once in the last 24 hours I have heard opposing team’s comments on what a smart coach we have heading up our team this year. We are 4 games into the season and have already topped the Capitals, our toughest challenge, ever? One of the few teams that had hardly any changes during the off season. Our starting schedule is a little rough, 4 road trip games in a row, 3 of them home openers against very challenging teams (Tampa Bay is currently 3-0), one back-to-back game weekend already under our belt and the next occurring tonight.
No one said it was going to be easy, the Atlanta Thrashers are starting this season as the team with the most off season changes, with the Lightning right behind us. Craig Ramsay is doing an amazing job being proactive and determined with every day. And you can see, with the players he works with, it is infective and inspiring.
Below is some amazing feedback I found on Chris Vivlamore’s blog this morning from an Anaheim fan.
(hopefully I am posting it correctly as I have never done this before!)
http://blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-thrashers-blog/2010/10/16/thrashers-win-in-shootout/#comment-18889