Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Someone left the cake out in the rain.

Meet your two newest Atlanta Thrashers: Clarke MacArthur and Evgeny Artyukhin.
Evgeny Artyukhin was acquired at the beginning of the season from the Tampa Bay Lightning for Drew Miller and a 3rd round draft pick. After putting up four goals and five assists in 37GP this season, the Ducks traded him to Atlanta for Nathan Oystrick and a conditional pick. Oystrick has been passed on the depth chart by Kulda, and with Atlanta's recent signing of Chris Chelios became a moot point - he played all year in the league last season, but that wasn't going to happen this season, or possibly next.

Artyukhin brings some size to the bottom six - at 6' 4" and 255 lbs. he's a brick wall. Last season he also managed to get 151 penalty minutes, so there's that, too. If something needs to be taken care of on ice, we have him in addition to Boulton. With Valabik out the intimidation factor's a bit less than it should be, so Art helps. He also can park it in front of the net for screens and rebounds, too, which is something that the Thrashers haven't had since Tkachuk.

Clark MacArthur is not nearly as big as Art is (5' 11", 191 lbs.), but he's very quick on his feet and has the ability to score. He has 13 goals and 13 assists for the year and should be on pace for a decent season. He's a -14, which is concerning, but placed on the 3rd line (where I'm assuming he'll be) he should play fine - perhaps working his way up. He did play under Cunnyworth in the AHL, though, so hopefully the familiarity will be beneficial to him. Max played better set free from Buffalo's system; maybe this might work for MacArthur as well.

Moving forward, the Thrashers now have fifteen forwards on the roster (after the trade freeze, roster limits don't matter anymore). That, obviously, means three healthy scratches a night from here on out. Artyukhin and Boulton could be rotated if necessary. Thorburn and MacArthur could be as well if necessary, with Slater moving down from the 3rd line back to the 4th. We're going to have to roll some interestring line combos here for the last month. I hope that hat that Anderson pulls them out of is geared up and ready to go.

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