Prospective Look at Atlanta

The Thrashers will start my look at all thirty teams in the off-season, as we near the Entry Draft and the July 1st Free Agent Frenzy. The playoffs are still about us, but the teams that have not made it will be the first ones to be examined.

If there is one thing to say about the Thrashers, it's that there is a lot of flexibility to get better next season. They should be a very big player in the Draft and Frenzy this summer, which is a mighty exciting prospect for all of those in Blueland. As for poolies, there will be that excitement to see who may line-up with Ilya Kovalchuk at the beginning of next season.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Ilya Kovalchuk	Alexei Zhitnik	Ondrej Pavelec
Slava Kozlov	Niclas Havelid
Todd White	Garnet Exelby
Colby Armstrong	Ken Klee
Brian Little	Tobias Enstrom
Jim Slater
Eric Perrin
Erik Christensen
Joe Motzko
Colin Stuart
Brad Larsen

These are the most notable players, likely to get a great look in camp for next season and have a contract for next season. There are a few names that are missing, since they will become free agents come July 1st. Most notable is starting goalie, Kari Lehtonen, who is a restricted free agent this year.

This current line-up is only valued at $29.5 million and they already have the bulk of their blueline signed up and you could also start thinking about prospect, Boris Valabik, who did play in 7 games for Atlanta and will make over $850,000 this coming season.

Of course, the number one concern in the off-season will be Lehtonen and in the Sherpa's approximation, he'll be valued at around $3.5 million per season as market value. Of course, negotiations for the number one guy could a little higher, as a lot of European goaltenders are making a fair bit of scratch.

The Thrashers will have to go fishing for a couple top six forwards to help out their superstar forward that they already have. There will also should be a direction for a top four defenseman. When the final cap number is announced, you'll ceratinly know how much they'll have to work with, after signing Lehtonen to a long-term deal.