Welcome Jeff Odgers

As I noted in my previous posting I did not attend last night's preseason game because I was at the Sufjan Stevens show at the Fox, which was a mild letdown I have say. How can a musician put out an album that is so popular that he can release a 2nd album of leftover material and yet only bother to play 4 songs from said album and zero from the follow up record during a 2 hour plus concert. Attention Sufjan: there is a reason few bought your first few albums, they were not as good as your more recent stuff, play your best material!!!!

But I do have some hockey-related thoughts to share. While driving to the concert I listened to the Thrashers radio play-by-play. The radio color guy Billy Jaffe is leaving Atlanta to go become the TV color guy for MSG on Islander broadcasts this coming season. So last night they were breaking in former Thrasher Jeff Odgers as a new radio color guy. In the middle of the 2nd period Dan Kamal (the radio announcer) said something like "well look who swung by the booth, the guy who is leaving us" and Billy Jaffe said "hello". At which point Jeff Odgers interjected, "Gee, this is awkward, I feel like the new girlfriend when you run into the ex-girlfriend." Which I have to say was hilarious at the time he said it. Kamal retorted something to the effect that "well, I'm not sure our relationship was quite like that." and Odgers said, "I'm glad to hear that!"

Odgers sounded like a rookie but there is potential there. Most teams employ retired players as the color man, but of course as an expansion team the Thrashers had none (although they could hired a few Atlanta Flames veterans but choose not to do so.) Now that the team is a couple of years along they actually have a pool of retired veterans to mine for color talent.

By the way, my spy at the game reported that all 5 goals scored by the Thrashers in the first period were soft in the spy's opinion and thus we shouldn't get too high on the team's offense just yet, but we should look forward to those 8 games against Florida Panthers now that Roberto Luongo is out of Miami.