Late Weekend Briefing

A few news items that are probably worth everyone's while:

- Angelo Esposito has torn his ACL again. The same ACL that he tore a little while back. Needless to say, he's out for the season. Frustrating news for Esposito personally, of course. It takes a long time to recover from an ACL injury, and, well...

I'm not trying to be rude, but perhaps it's time to paraphrase Lady Bracknell and admit that to screw your ACL once (like Big Shooter, who plays hockey in a comical prat-falling style) may be regarded as a misfortune; to do it twice looks like carelessness.

I'll go out on a limb and say that he more than likely wasn't going to become a major NHL player anyway. I mean, look at his stats.

- Most interesting news out of Thrasherville this weekend---aside from all this crazy winning the Thrashers are doing---is that the team has recalled Boris Valabik from the Wolves. To Atlanta. To play on the Thrashers. The team we follow.

There are huge questions about where Valabik fits into this line-up and this style of play. Sure, it takes a relatively long time to develop a defenseman, especially a great big one like Valabik. There are even people who still say we need to adopt a "wait and see" attitude towards Boris. I don't think we can afford the luxury of giving him on-the-job training, and I think most sane people would admit that all of our current bottom-3 D---Salmela, Schubert, and Popovic---are better than Valabik.

So what do we do? The Falconer says that the Thrashers have been scouting the Nashville Predators lately. So it's not unreasonable to speculate about a quick and quiet Valabik-for-somebody trade. Which would be better for everyone, I think. The Thrashers can play their game without the risks that Valabik poses (penalties, mainly), Boris gets to go to a team to which he is much more suited, and the Predators get to have a bench that includes both Boris Valabik and Barry Trotz, a menacing and intimidating duo if there ever was one.