Isles Take on Thrashers Again
February 1st, 2007 by Tom
The Islanders will head to Altanta to play the Thrashers for the second time in less than a week tonight. Altanta beat the GoodGuys 5-4 on Friday thanks to Ilya Kovalchuck’s goal in overtime. That sucked. The Thrashers lead the season series 2 to 1, scoring a 4-1 victory in November. The Isles had one of their few routs of the season when they beat Atlanta 6-0 in December. Kovalchuk comes into the game on fire. He’s scored in four straight games, tallying six goals over that span. Marian Hossa leads Atlanta with 31 goals and 66 points.
Ricky DP hopes to play better tonight than he did when he last faced the Thrashers. Atlanta scored three times less than six minutes into the game on Friday. DP got pulled and Mike Dunham did a heck of a job keeping the Isles in the game. Of course, the 67-Million-Dollar-Man has also played well against Atlanta, shutting them out with 37 saves in the December victory. So anything is possible.
Some quotes following Friday’s loss:
- “You’re playing a first-place team and you’re down 3-0 in their rink,” Coach Nolan said. “You have to give them credit for bouncing back.”
- “We’ve got to start better,” Chris Campoli said. “You can’t let a team like that get up 3-0. We battled all game, showed a lot of character and proved we’re a good hockey team. … But tonight, it was just too much, I guess.”
- “A game like this can change in minutes,” Kovalchuk said. “It wasn’t our best game, but we found a way to win it.”
