The First Team is Out

It's true. 65 picks... down the drain. The Atlanta Thrashers were swept by the Rangers on Wednesday night. The elimination of Atlanta means that there will be no more Ilya Kovalchuk (2 points), Marian Hossa (1 point) or their top scorer, Keith Tkachuk (3 points). I don't think those teams who made Atlanta their favourite over the Rangers are really going to miss them... they didn't do anything to begin with. The most popular Thrasher was Box 11's Niclas Havelid. He was taken 17 times.

Now you can see how many people took a certain player... you can now go to the breakdown page. I was asked to add it, so I did. It's kind of interesting.

Spotlight Player



The first goalie through... Henrik Lundqvist is the spotlight player tonight. He won all four games to sweep Atlanta and collected a shutout for a whopping 10 points in the first round. Pretty impressive for a guy only one team thought was worthy of going all the way. Oddly enough, that same team had three Thrashers as well. No seriously. Odd, I know.

Game Winning Goal Scorers
I've gotta go back another night first to recap the bonus points, so bear with me for a second. Michael Nylander won Game 3 for the Rangers on Tuesday night in the 7-0 rout. Non-pool defenseman, Anton Volchenkov, tallied the winner in the tight 2-1 win for the Senators to extend their lead in the series to 3-1. In Big D, it was Trevor Linden who picked up a rebound in the 3rd and buried it, along with the Stars, to help the Canucks to a 3-1 series lead. Minnesota lived to fight another day on Tuesday. Marian Gaborik scored the winner for the Wild, so they'll go back to Anaheim to see if they can do the impossible. Finally on Tuesday, Jarome Iginla did what was beginning to look impossible and that was score a winning goal against the Red Wings.

On Wednesday, Scott Gomez blocked a shot and scored the winner in OT for the Devils to draw even with the Lightning in their series. It was quite the shot in the far corner against Holmqvist. The elimination goal against the Thrashers was scored by Matt Cullen; taken by no one. On Long Island, the Islanders fell yet another game behind the Sabres with the credit going to Chris Drury for the winner. Lastly, the Sharks made home-ice advantage of their own, defeating the Predators 3-1, with Milan Michalek scoring the winner midway through the second frame.



Three teams face elimination on Thursday night... the Penguins, Stars and Wild will all fight for their playoff lives. All three teams will have to do it on the road as well, which makes the task even harder. How many more players will be eliminated from the pool? Who's hopes will get dashed a little bit more? Should be an interesting evening for hockey on Thursday night.

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