Mike Chen's Hockey Blog

Don Waddell’s Biggest Mistake

by Mike Chen on 01/09/09 at 10:00 AM ET
Comments (7)

How did it all go so terribly wrong for the Atlanta Thrashers? At one point there was a whole heck of a lot of hope and exciting surrounding this team. They could score, they had young goaltending talent, and they had a proven Stanley Cup-winning coach.

Since then, the Thrashers have been dismantled into a train wreck of a franchise, with accusations of apathy from the head coach and a star player getting more press for trade rumors than goal scoring. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that the Thrashers only made the playoffs once in their existance or that their only playoff appearance was a pitiful four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Rangers.

Where did it all go wrong? I’m betting that Don Waddell’s biggest regret stems down to one transaction. That is, one transaction that didn’t happen.

Right before the lockout, it seemed like the Thrashers had finally turned Marc Savard’s potential into tangible results. The year after the lockout, Savard flew even higher with 97 points. With Marian Hossa and Ilya Kovalchuk powering the way and Slava Kozlov still putting up good numbers, things sure looked rosy in BlueLand. Sure, they had some holes but the foundation was there for success.

With Savard hitting free agency, few people—myself included—would think that he’d put up the same numbers without Ilya Kovalchuk on his wing. Boy, were we wrong. More importantly, Don Waddell was wrong for not ponying up the cash necessary to keep Savard in the fold.

The following season (2006-07), the Thrashers did indeed make the playoffs. However, their goals-for dropped by 35. Having Savard would have certainly kept the team around the 281 goals they had scored in the previous season with Savard. Hartley had the team playing better defense, dropping their goals-against from 275 in 2005-06 to 245 in 06-07, though their power play sunk from the league’s top 10 to the league’s bottom 10. As for Savard, he maintained his dynamite playmaking and was recently named to this year’s All-Star team.

So let’s look at what transpired. The year after Savard, Atlanta’s team defense got better but the team failed to score anywhere near as many goals. As a result, Atlanta’s trade deadline involved a disaster deal for secondary scoring in Keith Tkachuk (Glen Metropolit, 1st round pick, 2nd round pick, and a 3rd round pick). The team also tried to get a power-play defenseman in Alexei Zhitnik, though it cost promising young blueliner Braydon Coburn.

Now let’s speculate a little bit here; say Savard had stayed with Atlanta and the team was putting up goals at their 2005-06 clip (281) while keeping them out at their 2006-07 pace (245). Let’s also assume that their power play stayed strong enough that acquiring Zhitnik wasn’t necessary. They could have kept Coburn, who’s developed into a quality defenseman in his own right, and used the other assets in different ways (either draft or trading for better pieces to the puzzle).

The following season, Atlanta traded Marian Hossa when Waddell felt Hossa wouldn’t re-sign with the team. Would Hossa have stayed if the Atlanta offense was still a league powerhouse? It’s hard to tell but it certainly would have helped. With this season’s development of forward Brian Little, a Thrashers squad with Kovalchuk, Hossa, Savard, Kozlov, and Little would have one of the best top-two lines in the league.

Of course, Savard wouldn’t have prevented goalie Kari Lehtonen from constantly getting hurt. However, the Thrashers could have had the scoring prowess to overcome it, and the team’s defense could have been augmented through lesser transactions into a solid, not spectacular bunch. Perhaps a culture of winning would have aided Tobias Enstrom’s development even further, as the young blueliner has struggled in his sophomore season. You can also bet that Atlanta wishes they still had Braydon Coburn.

Instead, the Thrashers play to empty seats and the Ilya Kovalchuk trade rumors float by just about every hour. Fans are calling for Don Waddell’s head and any success appears to be at least a few years away—though no one’s quite sure where it will come from (hello John Tavares).

Was Savard the single thread that caused everything to fall apart? It’s hard to say, but it sure seems like it.

Filed in: NHL | Mike Chen's Hockey Blog | Permalink
Tags: Atlanta+Thrashers, Marc+Savard,

Comments

That’s a pretty huge pyramid of ‘what ifs’…

Posted by shep on 01/09/09 at 11:17 AM ET

So… where’s the transaction that didn’t happen? The loss of Savard happened. The trade of Coburn happened. The trade of Hossa happened. Did I miss something?

Posted by Todd from Tampa on 01/09/09 at 11:48 AM ET

Todd, it’s the “move that never happened”...that is, not re-signing Savard. Basically, I’m saying that the loss of Savard killed their scoring depth, screwed up the PP, thus forcing them to make dumb moves and kill organizational depth which led to the loss of Hossa and the miserable state they’re in.

And Shep, yeah, it is a big “what if” scenario and it doesn’t take Lehtonen’s injuries into account. But I gotta believe that things would have gone way differently if they’d kept those 90 points in the fold.

Posted by Mike Chen on 01/09/09 at 12:39 PM ET

My friends have officially banned me from saying “Imagine if we still had Savard...” while watching Bruins games. I don’t know if he would have prevented the train wreck that was the Zhitnick trade, but I think we’d be infinitely better off as a team if he had stayed around.

Posted by Jennifer on 01/09/09 at 02:27 PM ET

Well...yeah. You could say the same thing about the Rangers or Flames dealing him. If I’m not mistaken, none of the players swapped for Savard are NHLers today (not sure about the draft picks, I think Craig Anderson was one of them?).

Ninety-point pivots don’t grow on trees. This guy won two scoring titles in the OHL, I don’t think it took a genius to forsee that he might turn into a good player someday.

BTW, I think a few posts ago you said that Tampa won the Presidents Trophy. That’s incorrect.

Posted by shep on 01/09/09 at 02:31 PM ET

Wadell is the worst GM in the NHL today. How he continues to be employed is amazing. Probably due to ownership issues. If they had solid upper management inAtlanta we’d be more positive about the future of hockey there.

Posted by Faux Rumors from Globally- Here, there, Everywhere on 01/12/09 at 02:07 PM ET

I think the bigger mistake was trading for a read goalie when Kari Lehtonen had a major injury in the 1st game of the 2006 season. If they had dealt a 1st rounder to Buffalo for Biron they would have made the playoffs in 2007 (missed by just 2 points after crappy minor league netminding killed them in the 1st half) and would still have Coburn and the 2nd and 3rd rounders then sent away in the Tkachuk deal.

Posted by The Falconer on 01/13/09 at 10:51 PM ET

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About Mike Chen’s Hockey Blog

Mike Chen prides himself in being the only hockey writer integrating puck discussion with both Morrissey quotes and Star Wars references. Since 2004, he’s blogged about all things hockey and currently contributes to FoxSports.com, the Battle of California, and RotoRob.

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