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Blue Jackets put an end to Thrashers win streak
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Columbus hopes a decisive win can get the Blue Jackets out of their recent funk.

Pascal Leclaire made 21 saves for his league-leading seventh shutout and the Blue Jackets beat the Atlanta Thrashers 2-0 on Wednesday night.

"Guys came in and were ready to play and we played a simple game," said Leclaire, who was credited with an assist on Dan Fritsche’s goal. "If we play that kind of hockey when our stars come back there’s no reason we shouldn’t win a lot of hockey games."

Injured Blue Jackets’ forwards Fredrik Modin, Michael Peca and Manny Malhotra were also out of the lineup.

The Thrashers saw their four-game winning streak snapped in their first visit to Columbus in just over four years. Ilya Kovalchuk, the league’s top goal scorer with 29, was held to just two shots.

"We really played hard," Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock said. "We did an unbelievable job of checking and creating chances in the first two and a half periods."

With Rick Nash nursing a sore throat, Fritsche and Jared Boll picked up the scoring for Columbus, which entered having tallied only four goals in the last four games, three of them losses.

Fritsche started the scoring with a power-play goal at 7:39 of the first period on a wrist shot down the right wing that snuck under the arm of goalie Kari Lehtonen. Defenseman Ron Hainsey weaved into the Atlanta zone, flicked a backhand pass to an open Fritsche before setting a half-screen near the crease.

The man-advantage tally was only the Blue Jackets’ sixth in their last 58 opportunities.

"We had every excuse to lose this game tonight," Fritsche said referring to a depleted line-up. "We took it as motivation, knew a lot of guys were going to have to step up and a lot of guys did that."

Defenseman Kris Russell hit the post later in the period on another power play.

Boll made it 2-0 early in the second period with his fourth thanks to a persistent forecheck. While linemates Sergei Fedorov and Curtis Glencross created havoc near the Thrashers net, he dragged a loose rebound away from Jim Slater while gliding backwards and slotted a low shot from the edge of the crease just beyond the reach of Lehtonen.

"Guys stepped up and we played a team game," Boll said.

Columbus continued to apply the pressure with Nikolai Zherdev clanging a shot off the left post on a power play that started at 13:16.

The teams skated to a scoreless third period with Atlanta still not generating any real scoring chances.

"They were doing the things that we talked about doing," Atlanta general manager and coach Don Waddell said. "We were coming 200 feet the whole night. They were bottling us up in their own zone and the neutral zone."

Notes: Nash and Kovalchuk tied Jarome Iginla for the most goals (43) in 2003-04. ... Atlanta’s Slava Kozlov played in his 1,000th career NHL game. ... The Blue Jackets are 13-2-4 when scoring first. ...Kovalchuk, who’s scored the most goals and power play goals in the league since the 2001-02 season, played in his 165th consecutive game to set a new Thrashers franchise record.

Community Events
Thrashers headed to Canada after team's sale
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WINNIPEG, Manitoba — The wait is over for Winnipeg hockey fans.

For Atlanta, it means saying goodbye to another NHL team.

True North Sports and Entertainment scheduled a news conference Tuesday at Winnipeg's MTS Centre to make "a significant community announcement."

True North has been in negotiations with the owners of the Atlanta Thrashers to buy the NHL team and move it to Winnipeg. The deal is reportedly worth $170 million, which includes a $60 million relocation fee that would be split by the rest of the league.

Winnipeg has been without NHL hockey since the Jets moved to Phoenix in 1996. The Thrashers entered the league three years later as an expansion franchise, but ownership problems, a losing team and dwindling attendance doomed the club. The team ranked 28th out of 30 teams this year with an average attendance of less than 14,000.

Assuming the deal goes through - it still must be approved by the other owners - Atlanta would become the first city in the NHL's modern era to lose two teams.
The Flames moved to Calgary in 1980 after eight seasons in Atlanta.

True North was making its announcement one day before the start of the Stanley Cup final, which begins Wednesday in Vancouver between the Canucks and the Boston Bruins.
While there was no prohibition on announcing major news during that series, the league preferred to get the Thrashers' sale off its plate before opening its signature event.

For weeks, the two sides had been working through complex legal details on the sale and relocation of the team, while leaving open the possibility that a local buyer would emerge late in the process. No one ever came forward with a serious offer, according to the Thrashers' ownership group, Atlanta Spirit, and the city's mayor, Kasim Reed.

"It is going to hurt the city but we will withstand it just fine and we will get through it," Reed said.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said on his weekly radio show that the inability to find an owner who wanted to keep the team in Atlanta was a barrier the league couldn't overcome.

"It would be one of those head scratchers where you say, 'Look at all of this great corporate opportunity, look at all of this grass roots hockey, why doesn't somebody want to own a team here?'" Bettman said. "And that would be a difficult, but unfortunate, situation to be dealing with if it has reached, or does reach, that point."

Bettman was asked if Atlanta had hopes of landing another NHL team if it lost its second franchise.

"The prospect of leaving Atlanta isn't something that I'm particularly fond of," he said. "So I can't even contemplate the notion of what would happen after that in terms of coming back. We respect the importance of Atlanta as a city. It's a big market, but this is a franchise that's got a problem in that market."

Team president Don Waddell says there remains some hope for a late development until a sale is made official and approved by the NHL board of governors, which is scheduled to meet June 21 in New York. But considering Atlanta Spirit, which also owns the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and the operating rights to Philips Arena, has been trying for years to sell the hockey team, that seems highly unlikely.

Also, any potential owner would have to agree to become a tenant at Philips Arena, a major stumbling block because it would cut into potential revenue from sources such as concessions, parking, luxury suites and other events.

"Ownership still is committed to selling at a greatly reduced price to anyone committed to Atlanta," Waddell said.