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Thrashers beat Rangers, get first win of season

Oct 19, 2007 - 3:18 AM By Phil Foley PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

ATLANTA (Ticker) -- Seven tries and a coaching change was all it took for the woeful Atlanta Thrashers to finally win a game.

Todd White and Marian Hossa each had a goal and an assist and 12 different Thrashers recorded a point as Atlanta posted its first win of the season, a 5-3 victory over the New York Rangers on Thursday.

Johan Hedberg turned aside 24 shots in relief of an injured Kari Lehtonen for the Thrashers, who avoided the dubious distinction of becoming the fifth team to start a season by dropping its first seven games.

"It's a big win for us," Hedberg said. "That was a big monkey off our back. A lot has happened over the last two days and we are starting a new season. We wanted to start (it) off in a good way, and I think we did that."

Atlanta, which won its first Southeast Division crown last season, had dropped 10 in a row, including a sweep by the Rangers in the 2007 Eastern Conference quarterfinals.

General manager Don Waddell had seen enough, firing coach Bob Hartley and taking the coaching reigns on an interim basis on Wednesday.

Playing their first game under Waddell on Thursday, the Thrashers began to put last season's disappointment and this campaign's futility behind them.

"The thing we talked about was starting (tonight) 0-0," Waddell said. "We have 76 games left - 38 at home and 38 on the road. We're going to try to win as many games as we can and try to have some fun."

Early in the first period, Brad Larsen flipped a pretty backhand pass to Pascal Dupuis, who beat goaltender Henrik Lundqvist to give Atlanta a 1-0 lead at 4:21.

"We started the game on the right foot," Dupuis said. "Scoring that first goal really helped."

It was the first time that the Thrashers, who blew a two-goal lead in Saturday's game against the New Jersey Devils, have scored the game's first tally this season.

"We haven't played from a lead to start a game (all season)," Waddell said. "We talked about it being important for us to get the lead and get the crowd in the game if we could score early. We were fortunate to do that."

Atlanta, which entered Thursday with the third-worst power play in the NHL, doubled the lead during a two-man advantage at 6:23. Hossa's cross-crease pass found Vyacheslav Kozlov, who put the puck into an open side of the net for his second of the campaign.

White, Atlanta's much-maligned offseason acquisition, got into the act when he netted his first goal of the season while shorthanded midway through the second, giving Atlanta a 3-0 advantage.

The Thrashers, who looked listless in their first six games, even showed some fight on the ice. Garnet Exelby leveled Petr Prucha with a open-ice check midway through the third, drawing the ire of Rangers enforcer Colton Orr, who immediately came onto the ice to spar with the defenseman.

"It was pretty ugly there at the end," said Waddell, who was jawing with the officials. "We weren't real happy with some of the things that happened there, but that's part of the game.

"The biggest thing is that we came out of there with two points."

After Atlanta rookie Bryan Little scored just under three minutes into the third, Rangers defenseman Daniel Girardi recorded his first NHL goal with a slap shot from the left faceoff circle on the power play with 9:47 remaining in the game, cutting the deficit to 4-1.

Hossa tallied during a man advantage less than two minutes later to restore Atlanta's four-goal bulge.

Brendan Shanahan and Scott Gomez added late power-play goals to cap the scoring.

"We are playing from behind too often, and that is what is killing us," Gomez said. "You have to give Atlanta credit. With all the turmoil they have been through, you know they were going to be a different team."

Lundvist, who allowed just six goals in the Rangers' four-game playoff sweep of the Thrashers, yielded five in this one on 28 shots.

"We made it tough on ourselves the way we started the game," Lundvist said. "They got a good start. They got the momentum. We had to play on our heels."

The news was not all positive for Atlanta, which lost Lehtonen to a groin injury in the first period. The 23-year-old Finn made nine saves before coming up lame after stopping Ryan Callahan's shot with 8 1/2 minutes remaining in the session.

Lehtonen will have an MRI on his groin in a few days, when the swelling goes down. He is expected to miss Saturday's game at Tampa Bay.