AK Bars Loses in Playoffs

AK Bars Kazan, the team dubbed the "New York Rangers of the East" for their spending on numerous NHL stars, has been knocked out of the first round of play in the Russian Super League Playoffs. The team includes current Atlanta Thrashers players Ilya Kovalchuk, Dany Heatley, and Slava Kozlov, along with fellow NHLers Alexei Zhitnik (Buffalo), Darius Kasparaitis (New York Rangers), Alexei Kovalev (New York Rangers), Freddie Brathwaite (Columbus), Vincent Lecavalier (Tampa Bay), and Nikolai Khabibulin (Tampa Bay). AK Bars was defeated by Lokomotiv Yaroslavl 2-1.

Blue Ice?

The Buffalo Sabres are using their farm team, the Rochester Americans of the AHL, to test out a new blue colored ice surface at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, NY. The "experiment" began after NHL officials suggested that changing the color of the ice surface would improve how the game is viewed on TV. The blue lines are now bright orange, and the same orange color is used for the faceoff dots. The centerline was changed from red to dark blue. Supposedly, the white ice causes a glare and changing the color to this light blue will help alleviate that.



Info and photos from Yahoo! Sports.

Where are they now?

Info from AJC.com:

Serge Aubin Playing in Switzerland

Braydon Coburn Playing in junior WHL (Portland)

Byron Dafoe Working out in Atlanta

Garent Exelby Working out in Atlanta

Niclas Havelid Playing in Sweden

Dany Heatley Playing in Russia

Tomas Kloucek Playing in Czech.

Ilya Kovalchuk Playing in Russia

Vyacheslav Kozlov Playing in Russia

Brad Larsen Playing in AHL (Chicago)

Francis Lessard Unknown

Kari Lehtonen Playing in AHL (Chicago)

Ivan Majesky Playing in Czech.

Shawn McEachern Playing in Sweden

Scott Mellanby Working out in Atlanta

Jaroslav Modry Injured while playing in Czech.

Pasi Nurminen Playing in Sweden

Ronald Petrovicky Playing in Slovakia

Marc Savard Dismissed from Swiss team

Benjamin Simon Playing in AHL (Chicago)

Patrik Stefan Playing in Finland

Andy Sutton Playing in Switzerland

Daniel Tjarnqvist Playing in Sweden

J.P. Vigier Playing in AHL (Chicago)

Yep... first post

Lately I have stumbled upon the phenomenon of hockey "blogs." It's an interesting idea. I went to hockeyblogs.org and found that there's just a ton of hockey bloggers out there for almost every team. Now, I grew up in Flint, Michigan and have been a huge Red Wings fan since I was 9. My favorite player ever since I started watching hockey is Slava Kozlov. Naturally, I was bummed when he got traded to Buffalo in the summer of '01, but I have adjusted to a Kozzie-less Red Wings team. When Kozzie was traded to the Atlanta Thrashers during the 2002 Entry Draft, I became hooked on the team and never looked back. So, after checking out the Hockey Blogs site, I found that my Red Wings had 10 blogs dedicated to them, but none covering the Thrashers. So that's how this site was born.

I assume that if you're reading this, you're very well aware of the current lockout and that there isn't a whole lot of NHL news right now... but I will try to update with info about Thrashers players playing overseas and try to keep an eye on the Chicago Wolves (AHL) as well.