Adios Karrpa

As most any Thrasher fan is aware already - We traded Kari Lehtonen last night for Ivan Vishnevskiy, a 1st round, pick 27, defenseman that has bounced between the NHL and AHL in the Stars system over the last two years and a 4th round draft pick.

What did we really get? and what did we really give up? Ok let's talk about that here for a couple of minutes.

First, because I know it better, what did we give up? We gave up a glass groined, unreliable, 12 sandwich eating, tantrum throwing, immature, no work ethic having, brilliant when I wanna be Finnish goalie. Could the kid play goal...hell yeah...when he wanted. Could you count on him having a prolonged injury at the beginning of a season? Just like you could count on the sun shining. We've paid the better part of 3 million dollars this season for what? How much production has he generated? How many saves has he made for us this season? If it were just this one season I would say cut the brother a break, but it's EVERY season that we have dealt with this. Eventually you have to decide to cut bait and fire up the motor and find another fishing hole.

What did we get in return? Another player that's going to need "development" we got at best for the time being a 3rd pair defenseman with a offensive mindset and little NHL training...oh..and a 4th round shot in the dark. Actually for the fact that Kari hasn't played at all this season..what we got wasn't a bad deal at all.

Now I've read a lot of message boards and comments and there seems to be two camps...two mindsets..and they are both very different. There is the mindset that Kari was a drain and wasn't anything we've been able to count on and so thank God the Kari Lehtonen experiment has drawn to a close, then there is the side that looks at this as just another top lottery draft pick out the door with little to nothing to show for it.

I'm with both of you. Personally, it was time to cut Kari out, he's been nothing but  a liability to this club for the past several years and has contributed little to nothing in the way of stability and lasting performance. On the other hand, he was a 2nd overall pick, and combined with watching Kovy walk out the door less than a week ago that shit stings.

What I think is, people don't have a problem with Kari the player being traded. They have a problem with Kari the 2nd overall pick being traded and what that says about our ability to pick, develop and retain talent. The question I have in Kari's case is this, what could the Thrashers have done differently?

Having the 2nd pick and with no real goalie in the system worth a crap at the time, and trying to build from the crease out what was Waddell supposed to do? Pass on THE top goalie pick of the draft. He did the right thing then, now fast forward 8 years and look at what he's had to deal with. Year after year his goalie that he was trying to build with spends the first month to two months out with groin injuries. He even went so far as to pretty much order Kari to spend an off season with Ray Bear to work on his conditioning, which has always been on the low side of acceptable (by the way..that was the only year he didn't get injured). You can't dictate to a player every year how to spend his off time.

I understand and agree that watching our top picks walk out the door has been frustrating, but instead of taking them all in one lump you have to dissect and look more closely at each one and each reason. Kari..was a smart move...Coburn was frickin' stupid....Ilya....frustrating. I'm not trying to defend the GM...just read down a post or two and you'll see I've pulled out the torch and pitchfork on him myself but to hang Kari on him as an example of cranial-rectal inversion is unfair.