Thrashers Give Mason the Nod in Net

The Atlanta Thrashers have seemingly found their starting goalie, winning the Chris Mason sweepstakes this Summer, signing him to a new 2-year deal worth $3.7 million, a $1.85 million cap hit each year. Mason had really turned some heads with his solid play in St. Louis over the past couple seasons, plus some good showings at the World Championships with the Canadian squad.  The Thrashers were seemingly looking to upgrade their goaltending situation after Johan Hedberg had a clear path to sign with the Devils earlier in the day.

Mason appeared in 61 games for the St. Louis Blues in 2010, earning a record of 30-22-8 with 2 shutouts, bringing his pool points total up to 64 points, ranking him 62nd among all players and 16th among goalies.  That's a pretty solid year, which was overshadowed by the Blues missing out on the playoffs in 2010.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Nikolai Antropov	Tobias Enstrom	Chris Mason
Rich Peverley	Ron Hainsey
Dustin Byfuglien	Zach Bogosian
Evander Kane	Johnny Oduya
Todd White	Brent Sopel
Jim Slater	Boris Valabik
Chris Thorburn

The additions of Dustin Byfuglien, Brent Sopel and Chris Mason to the team tables have already given new life to the Thrashers line-up, plus when the Thrashers put pen to paper with the newly-acquired Andrew Ladd, there will be some more optimism added to the team.

The Thrashers are doing quite well against the cap in this rebuilding phase that they are going through. They currently have 14 players signed onto their roster table for the approximate annual cap hit of $34.8 million, which gives them still $10 million left to spend in order to reach the salary cap floor. Ladd should do well to help boost that number up and there are still a good number of free agents left to help improve the team as well.

The Thrashers are adding some okay pieces to the overall picture of the team, but there isn't a lot of oomph oozing from the names that are listed.  The Thrashers are deep on the blueline and now have a good number one goalie, so at least they can say that they are building from the back.  Evander Kane, the team's 1st round pick in 2009 is coming around nicely after a full season in the NHL, but it still looks like they need a top end forward to really give them that boost over the top.