FanHouse Tobias Enstrom

Hockey fans in Atlanta have known nothing but losing and front office incompetence since the Thrashers joined the NHL a decade ago. Even the best season in franchise history, the 2006-07 campaign that saw the Thrashers qualify for their first and only playoff appearance, ended in disappointment as they were quickly swept under the rug in four games by the New York Rangers.

In the two seasons following that trip to the postseason, the Thrashers have returned to their sub-80-point ways, toiling at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings. Thanks to a couple of shrewd moves at the start of the offseason, and some returning young talent, this year's version of the Thrashers looks like it has a chance to make some noise.

Thrashers 5, Capitals 1: Break up the Thrashers. Thanks to its 5-1 drubbing of Washington on Monday, Atlanta has now won six in a row and seven of its past eight, as Kari Lehtonen turned aside an incredible 49 shots to lead the Thrashers. He was 1:15 away from registering his fourth shutout of the season, as Washington's Keith Aucoin finally broke through with his first goal of the season.

On the opposite end of the rink, Washington's Jose Theodore was mercifully yanked after giving up four goals on 19 shots, while the Thrashers converted on three of their four power play attempts -- without the services of Ilya Kovalchuk. Colby Armstrong, Slava Kozlov, Anssi Salmela, Tobias Enstrom and Eric Perrin all scored for Atlanta, while Salmela's goal was the first of his career.

As I was watching the Caps and the Predators in Washington last night, I couldn't help but keep an eye on the Flyers and Thrashers as they played in Atlanta. Of all the teams in the NHL, it seems as if the Thrashers have had nothing but hard luck in recent memory. It's hard to believe it's only been about 18 months since they qualified for their first playoff appearance -- one that ended in a four-game sweep to the New York Rangers.

The parade kept going downhill last season as the team dropped six straight out of the gate and head coach Bob Hartley was shown the door. GM Don Waddell stepped behind the bench, but he couldn't stop the bleeding as the misery culminated in the trade of Marian Hossa to the Penguins and the Thrashers limped to the finish.

Following up the franchise's first ever playoff appearance with such a disastrous performance couldn't help but have an impact at the box office, but even I was shocked when I started to see how much bleeding there was in Atlanta. Like a lot of other folks, I first noticed something was amiss when the Devils came to visit on October 16 (pictured above).

Now that we're into 2008, recovered from our hangovers (or flus, in my case), and pretty much halfway through the NHL season, it's time to reminisce about the past and look towards the future. There is no better way to do both than be looking at the league's rookies through the first half.

Here are the rookie scoring leaders as of January 3rd ...

Player	Team	GP	G	A	P	PIM	+/-	TOI/G
Patrick Kane	CHI	38	9	28	37	26	-2	18:29
Jonathan Toews	CHI	36	15	17	32	26	5	18:42
Nicklas Backstrom	WSH	40	7	22	29	10	-3	17:27
Tobias Enstrom	ATL	41	3	21	24	20	4	24:03
Martin Hanzal	PHX	38	3	17	20	16	0

For sure, the most surprising rookie on the top five is Tobias Enstrom of the Atlanta Thrashers. The 23-year old from Sweden was an 8th round selection in the 2003 Entry Draft, and pretty much written off as another 'small' (ie. under six feet tall) offensive defenseman who would never do well out of Europe.

Well, Enstrom is getting the most ice time for any rookie, by far, and is giving the Thrashers an unexpected boost to their rather poor defence corps. It's very hard for a defenseman to just come into the league and look like a 10-year vet (it took Lubomir Visnovsky a few years, for example), but Enstrom has done just that.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Since firing Bob "Goon-it-up-for-me-Boyahs!" Hartley after a horrendous 0-6 start to the season, Don Waddell's Atlanta Thrashers have clawed their way back towards respectability. With their knocking off the Red-and-Black hot (and Conference-leading) Ottawa Senators, they may have just given notice that the playoffs are not such a crazy idea for Peachtree Street this May. The win last night raised the Thrash to a tie for 3rd in the "Southleast", just 6 points behind the Hurricanes and smack in the middle of the mother of all hockey logjams that is the lower echelon of the Eastern Conference where 10 teams are within 5 points of each other.

At this point the Eastern Conference looks like the Republican Primary polling for New Hampshire. Teams like the Thrashers and Sabres are making strong moves to get themselves back into the hunt, while others like Toronto survive by constantly making it to OT for their pity points.

If Atlanta is serious about making the playoffs they have to tighten up defensively, especially on special teams, which are still atrocious as they were last season. Owners of the worst goal differential in the East and the 3rd worst penalty kill and power play, if their collective attention to detail improves so will their positioning in the playoff race. A look inside the numbers on a month to month basis bears out that they just might be doing that.