About the Thrashers - 12-18-08

A preview of the Thrashers.

Record: 10-16-4

Leading Scorer: Ilya Kovalchuk, 31 points (11 goals, 20 assists).

Last Game: 4-1 win at Ottawa Tuesday. Former Penguins forward Colby Armstrong scored two goals.

Last Game against the Penguins: 3-2 home loss, Nov. 20. Sidney Crosby had a goal and two assists.

Thrashers Player We Would Bet Money On Scoring: Slava Kozlov. He has 35 points (17 goals, 18 assists) in 35 career games against the Penguins.

Ex-Penguins on the Thrashers: Colby Armstrong, RW; Erik Christensen, C; Johan Hedberg (right), G; Chris Thorburn, C; Randy Cunneyworth, assistant coach; Peter Mahovlich, professional scout.

Ex-Thrashers on the Penguins: Pascal Dupuis, RW.

Useless Thrashers Trivia: The first player to score a penalty shot goal against the Thrashers was current Penguins forward Miroslav Satan. He did it as a member of the Sabres against Damien Rhodes in a 5-5 tie, Oct. 9, 1999.

Best Thrashers YouTube Video We Could Find: Kovalchuk had a pretty good commercial a few years ago with former Canucks captain Markus Naslund for Nike Hockey:

Notes:

-Marc-Andre Fleury and Ondrej Pavelec are expected to start in net. (Why do the Thrashers always seem to avoid giving Hedberg a start against the Penguins?)

-The Penguins had some much-needed downtime.

-If you'll be in the Atlanta area, tickets were still available as of midnight.

-The Thrashers are good against bad teams and bad against good teams.

-Check out this hit Atlanta's Bryan Little took from Ottawa forward Chris Neil Tuesday:

-Our live blog begins at aproximately 7 p.m. Please tune in.

-There really isn't any sort of note about goaltender Kari Lehtonen other than he's still on injured reserve due to a back injury. We just really wanted to use the above picture of him and Lil' Jon.

(Photo: Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)