The term “best ever” is thrown around too often. However, the goalie the Thrashers played against on Thursday night is clearly one of the greatest ever, no matter the era.
Martin Brodeur led his New Jersey Devils to a 1-0 shutout victory over the Thrashers at Blueland. The loss was Atlanta’s third in a row, and second consecutive regulation loss. Brodeur stopped 25 shots on his way to the victory. One of the closest to sneaking past Brodeur came off of Ron Hainsey’s stick before striking the piping to keep the Thrashers scoreless.
“He made unbelievable saves, that’s why he’s coming up on the best of all time,” Hainsey said about Brodeur’s performance. “We had some chances down there, we just couldn’t beat their all-world goalie.”
Atlanta did make things easy for itself as the team struggled to muster many chances on the power play again. Atlanta moved to 0-for-14 in the last three games with the man advantage, even though John Anderson saw some improvement on Thursday. “I thought it was our best game to date. It was much better tonight, if we don’t have chances then I’m concerned, today we had some real good chances.”
Even with those scoring chances the team played lackadaisically for a stretch in the second period, not fighting for pucks in the corner, something that Atlanta played dearly for on the scoreboard. “For a fifteen minute stretch we really got away from what we are trying to do … got caught really running around in that second period,” Hainsey pointed out. “We can still get better on retrieving the puck, more time in their zone … and battle for those pucks.”
Now the team will look to end its three-game losing streak at home against one of the Thrashers’ nemeses and one of the hottest teams in the league right now, the Buffalo Sabres. The Sabres handed the Rangers their first loss of the season just a few days ago after the Blueshirts started the year 4-0.
Boral can be reached a jboral@scoreatl.com.
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