Maple Leafs

[manny]

what the hell does it take for the Thrashers to beat this team....we didn't even score the late goal to prevent the shutout this time. It wasn't WWIII like the last one though. We need a goalie and a consistent offense.

[kluttz13]

what the hell does it take for the Thrashers to beat this team....we didn't even score the late goal to prevent the shutout this time. It wasn't WWIII like the last one though. We need a goalie and a consistent offense.

Any word on Lehtonen's return? Rehab? Conjuctivitis? Anything?

[manny]

Any word on Lehtonen's return? Rehab? Conjuctivitis? Anything?
I haven't heard anything.....I'll see if I can find something about a possible return.

[manny]

found this in a *hack* AJC opinion piece

Goalie injuries have been a problem in the NHL this season. For the Thrashers, it’s been more like an obsession. They used five goalies in their first 10 games. Only three teams in NHL history had ever used five goalies in a 10-game span, and never before at the start of the season.
Pasi Nurminen blew out his knee before training camp even started. Nurminen immediately retired. If nothing else, that lessened the chance of re-injury.
Then, would-be franchise goalie Kari Lehtonen suffered a groin/abdominal/core-muscle strain — it’s one of them floating things — in the first period of the first game at Florida. He hasn’t been seen since, but reportedly is working on strengthening his core-muscle group.
I figure with the proper off-season conditioning and workout program, Lehtonen can work his way up to two periods next season.
Lehtonen was replaced by Mike Dunham, who had been signed to replace Nurminen. Dunham played three games, then suffered a groin strain, came back three weeks later, played a few more games, then tore that sucker. So Waddell signed Steve Shields, who, like Dunham, was pretty much sitting on a coach. He played three games, which seems to have become sort of the invisible wall, then sprained his knee. He came back three weeks later, played a game, then hurt it again.
Notice any trend here?
“In 18 years of coaching, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Hartley said. “I remember talking to Don over the summer about how we finally had the perfect marriage in goal with Pasi and Kari. But obviously, we never got to church.”
The morgue — that’s another story.
Poor Garnett. His father and brother were in attendance for the first time to see him play an NHL game. But his team abandoned him.
Yes, this was only game 26. Lehtonen, Dunham and Shields all are on the radar for possibly returning by the end of the month. But does anybody want to give odds on the chances that any of them return and escape injury the rest of the year?

[manny]

Kari Lehtonen skated without problems for the second consecutive day Saturday at the Thrashers' Duluth practice facility. But general manager Don Waddell cautioned, "He's still not doing much." The heralded rookie had to leave the season opener at Florida after one period because of groin problems and has been mainly inactive since. Waddell said he thinks Lehtonen will be able to begin practicing fully when the Thrashers return from a three-game trip West in early December. "Then we'll know where we are," said Waddell, who has seen goalie after goalie go down to injuries.