One of the more up and coming teams in the league this season has been the Atlanta Thrashers.  Their youth movement is paying off in spades.  With the emergence of Ondrej Pavelec in-goal, Zach Bogosian on defense and guys like Evander Kane, Bryan Little and Rich Peverley emerging on the offensive side, this is going to be a solid team in the next few years and could even start surprising better teams this season.

One of their prospects who has had very little luck over the past few seasons, Angelo Esposito, suffered yet another setback over the weekend as he tore his ACL in his right knee.  Last year he did nearly the same in his left knee.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell it should.  He was the 20th overall pick in the 2007 draft and at one point was one of the best rated players in that draft.  He was traded by the Penguins to the Thrashers for Marian Hossa.

After registering 98 points for Quebec of the QMJHL, his production has steadily decreased.  Also his total games played has also gone down.  This season for the Chicago Wolves (AHL affiliate of the Trashers) in only 12 games, he has registered just 4 assists.  A player who was once expected to play alongside Malkin and Crosby in Pittsburgh, is nearly an afterthought in his own franchise’s future plans.

There was a time that Angelo’s In The Game cards (autographs and relics) were going for top dollar.  I remember seeing his autograph consistently sell for $50+.  Those days are gone and with him now possibly having two bad knees, his chances of being an impact player in the NHL are dwindling as well.  I really do want him to succeed, I even did a through the mail with him last season, while he was in Montreal of the QMJHL <link>.

His autographed and game used cards are routinely selling for under $25 now.  Even the card listed below out of ITG’s Superlative product line limited to just 9 copies, only sold for $28 on eBay.  That particular card was one of his priciest cards at one point.  Last year it fetched close to $70.  Until he can prove that he can play a full season, I think his cards are doomed, but if you want a card of an outstanding junior player who may or may not play in the NHL, there are some real bargains out there with respect to his cards.

Player’s Name: Angelo Esposito

Player’s Current Team: Montreal Juniors – Atlanta Thrashers

Player’s Current Address: c/o Montreal Juniors, 1410 Stanley Street, suite 602, Montreal, QC, Canada  H3A 1P8

Date Sent out: 2/2/09

Date Returned: 2/21/09  (19 days)

Why go after this autograph: Angelo at one point was one of the fastest rising stars in the junior ranks.  In 2007 he was projected to be drafted first overall, but he had a rough season that year, and dropped down to the Penguins in the middle of the first round in 2007.  After his next season in the juniors, he numbers got worse and the Pens shipped him to the Thrashers in a deal that sent Hossa and DePuis to the Pens.  This season he is actually on pace to match last season’s numbers, but reports are that he is playing better.  I still think he’s going to make a great pro, but this upcoming season will be very important, it really will be his make or break season.  What is strange about the autograph is that it’s more like an algebra equation than a signature.

Any Current Certified Autographs Available: There are quite a few on eBay,all from In The Game.  Below are a few examples.  They run from $10 – $30 on eBay.

The future of fighting

Fin de saison pour Angelo Esposito

Un texte de Chantal Léveillé de rue Frontenac:  ici

“I am the only one that hasn’t seen the hit,” said Ed Harding after the game on Tuesday night.

Well coach, here’s the Denis Reul’s hit on Angelo Esposito.

Is it a penalty? Yes no question and everyone that I spoke with agree. What I don’t agree with the five minute major and the game misconduct he received.

Esposito knew Denis Reul was coming.  He appeared he wanted to turn at the last second but didn’t.  He knew if he went face first into the glass, a penalty would be called.  It’s like Manu Ginobili of the San Antoinio Spurs who flops to draw a foul.  The least he could of done was go in shoulder first to protect himself better.

Now to Pierre McGuire who has the biggest red and white shades in the world (I don’t know how he can see the game with those things on).  He mentioned that Reul was going to pay when Montreal plays Lewiston.  Pierre, have you seen this video clip of Frederick Roy on Vincent Bourgeois of the Montreal Juniors?

If the Juniors can’t stand up to a teammate on the same ice, I highly doubt they will go after Reul for a hit at the World Junior Championships.  I could be wrong because Esposito is the golden boy of the team.  Bourgeois only has a goal and ten assists while Esposito has 15 goals for a total of 27 points.  Lewiston plays at Montreal on January 10th.  The two teams face off at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee on January 24th.

That’s My Take

(Nathan also started “The World of Junior Hockey Blog” and is a contributor to the Maine Hockey Journal. His email is fourniern@students.nescom.edu.)

Angelo Esposito signed and returned 4 cards / photos in 56 days through the Montreal Junior Hockey Club.  Really happy to get this request back, as one of the cards was a dual that had previously been signed by Steven Stamkos.  It was a risk sending it out, but I wouldn’t feel like the card would be complete unless it had been signed by both of them.  Esposito didn’t disappoint me.

I got expected #1 overall draft pick, Steven Stamkos TTM today.  Breaking a rather long drought.  I sent this early in the season, shortly after O Canada came out.  He signed 3/3, one of which was his dual with Angelo Esposito. 

Les Remparts de Patrick Roy sont éliminés, les Olympiques de Gatineau ont eu le dessus.

Que feront maintenant les gens de la ville de Québec, eux dont le sport professionnel est quasi absent de leur ville?

C’est pathétique de circuler dans la ville de voir des chandails de Radulov, de Esposito mais très peu de chandail des Canadiens ou de fanions des Canadiens accrochés aux voitures.  En fait en deux jours à Québec, je n’ai compté que deux voitures ayant des fanions des Canadiens accrochés aux voitures.

Québec a peut-être de bonnes équipes amateurs mais elle est largement complexée inférieurement face à Montréal qui est la championne du sport professionnel.  Le départ des Nordiques a laissé une blessure profonde à Québec et malgré l’organisation de plusieurs événements d’envergure dans la vieille capitale, la blessure demeure presque intacte.

Ici à Québec vous n’avez qu’à dire que vous venez de la région de Montréal et vous constaterez que plusieurs personnes entretiennent une haine face à Montréal.  La haine envers les Canadiens de Montréal est palpable surtout en séries.

En terminant, selon diverses rumeurs et conversations de bars et de restaurants à Québec, Patrick Roy ne reviendrait pas à la barre des Remparts l’an prochain. Est-ce que la prochaine étape pour le Roy est de dirigé une équipe de la ligue américaine avant de faire le saut dans la LNH?

It’s 2:20 pm Pacific time and the boys are in Buffalo sharpening their skates, blow-torching sticks and drinking umpteen cups of coffee and a Red Bull or two, while ticket takers and ushers and hot dog vendors slowly drift in to ready themselves for when the Habs trounce the Sabres.        

                                            (Here’s a couple of pictures of some of the nicer parts of Buffalo.)

I’ve got my pre-game ritual in motion too. Head over to TC’s pub for some drafts, eat lasagna for energy, and today, as an extra little ritual, laugh my head off because rental Marian Hossa got injured in his first game with the Penguins and will be out a week or longer!

Pittsburgh gave up some crazy talent (Christensen, Armstrong, and Angelo Esposito, AND A FIRST-ROUND DRAFT PICK!) for Hossa, who may be gone again in a couple of months because unlike Toe Blake and the boys, it’s all about money. This deal might come back and bite Pittsburgh in the ass.

4:30 Pacific time  – Game time. If all reports are correct, not one Montreal player got mugged on his way to the Buffalo rink.

5:00 Pacific time – Montreal jumps out to 2-0 on goals by Pekanec and Streit. Not sure if Montreal fans who made the trek to Buffalo have started to sing the ‘olay’ song just yet. Many though, are having a riot and drinking lots of beer. 

5:07 Pacific time – Just thinking that Buffalo used to have some good teams in the days of the French Connection line with Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, and Rene Robert. You know, it’s sad that Perreault didn’t play for the Habs. With him and Lafleur together, it would have been historic. People would still be talking about them. It could have been Morenz, Richard, Beliveau, Harvey, Lafleur, and Perreault.

6:08 Pacific time – Tomas Plekanac just scored for the third time tonight as the good guys are beating the bad guys 4-1. The ‘experts’ say there’s too many small guys on Montreal for them to be dangerous. But Plekanek, who’s only 5′10, one of those small guys, looks pretty dangerous to me.

Do you know that TSN guy Pierre McGuire picked the Rangers and Minnesota as two of the five teams he thinks will win the Cup. Montreal didn’t even get a sneeze. But McGuire and his fellow ‘experts’ like Bob McKenzie and Dave Hodge all picked Montreal to finish 14th and so far out of the playoffs you’d need a telescope to see them.

7:01 Pacific time – Holy smokes. 6-2 Montreal over Buffalo. What a big win. It was 5-1 over Atlanta, and now 6-2 in Buffalo since the Habs made Carey Price their number one goalie. And this win catapults them over Ottawa for top spot in the north-east!

I’m sure the team flies back tonight, so guys, get home, have a midnight sandwich, relax, and get ready for another big game Saturday night against the Devils. But leave your wives alone. Eddie Shore, Victor Tikhonov, Punch Imlach and Toe Blake all believed there should be no sex the night before the game. So it’s good enough for them, it should be good enough for you.

Originally Aired: February 26th 2008 at 8:00p.m.

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Topics Discussed:

- Memphis Tigers loss to the Tennessee Volunteers (NCAA MBB)

- Fantasy Baseball Preview

- Ben Wallace and Wally Szczerbiak traded to the Cavaliers

- Yao Ming season ending injury

- Obligatory Mothta’ F#$%n Segment

- NFL Franchise Tags / Cuts

- ‘Graveyard’

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Fun Facts:

• Debut of engineers Max Lieb and Harrison Gluck
• The website Jordan mentions about Larry Hughes is actually http://heylarryhughespleasestoptakingsomanybadshots.com/

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Weekly Credits Clip:

The death of Soulja Boy at a Milwaukee Bucks game (Starts at -00:51 mark).

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Back to Season Two

 Marian Hossa Takes the Pittsburgh Penguins from very good to hands-down favorite in the NHL’s Eastern Conference

Evidently Penguins GM Ray Shero thinks the Pens are ready to make a run for the Stanley Cup, trading away crowd favorites Colby Armstrong and Erik Christiansen, along side super prospect Angelo Esposito and a first round pick to the Trashers for offensive threat Marian Hossa and right winger Pascal Dupuis, according to the Post-Gazette. The Pens had already addressed their defensive needs by acquiring Hal Gill from Toronto.

There are definitely long term ramifications to the deal, which I will get to shortly, but first I’d like to congratulate my fellow Yinzers on officially boasting the best paper team in hockey. It’s a good feeling to be a favorite to win the cup.

Not that the Pens offense had been sputtering by any means, but the addition of Hossa, who’s vision and abilities will be welcome along side either Sid the Kid or Evgeni Malkin, officially make the Pens the most explosive team in the NHL, if not one of the most explosive ever.Think about it: Crosby, Malkin, Hossa, Sergei Gonchar and Petr Sykora on the same power play unit?!?! That’s three 100 point scorers, the league’s leading power play assist man, and a guy who’s tied for 8th in the NHL in power play goals. That’ll even have Martin Brodeur shaking in his pads.

From what I gather, Dupuis should be capable of filling into Colby Armstrong’s role as far as talent goes, though he’s a bit weaker offensively and doesn’t have the upside or Armstrong — Dupuis will turn 30 near season’s end. The significant downgrade here is in the oft-discussed chemistry department. Armstrong and Crosby were best friends on and off the ice, and though I doubt it will really be that big of a deal, chemistry can be a very big deal in hockey.

As unbelievable as the Hossa deal is, the acquisition of Gill from Toronto is possibly equally as important. The Pens glaring weakness all year besides some inconsistency early on from the offense and goaltending has been the failure of the defensemen to really impact the game. Gill is a shut-down defender, and plays as physical as any defensemen in the NHL. He comes with a reputation of being able to stifle any team’s premiere scorer, and offers the Pens another physical presence in their own zone beyond Brooks Orpik.

The Pens are a much better team right now because of this deal, but two glaring questions have to be answered: Does this deal make the Pens better 3 years from now? And was it worth it to send away 3 quality players, plus 3 draft picks to get back what we did?

The answer to the first question really depends on what the Pens intend to do with Hossa. The 29 year-old winger is in the last year of his contract, and will be an unrestricted free-agent at season’s end. I highly doubt that the Pens will be able to keep Crosby, Malkin, Hossa, and Marc-Andre Fluery all under the cap long-term.

Crosby’s making $8.7 million a year until 2013, and Malkin will be due for a raise into the $7-9 million range sometime between this summer and next. Fluery is making $1.6 million right now, and will get a new deal after this off-season, probably in the $3-4 million range. Either way, when the Pens decide that Marc-Andre is or isn’t the future of the franchise, they will need to dish out $5-7M at least on a solid goal-tender to be competitive long-term.

My guess is Hossa would be due somewhere between $6-7M per year to sign long-term, which I think would be affordable, though I really don’t know enough about the NHL salary system to say for sure that the Pens could make that work.

If the Pens make a good run at the Cup this year, as they should with this squad, and they can resign Hossa long-term, which is a solid maybe, then this deal could go down as a genius move by Shero. I was a huge Erik Christiansen fan, and the fact that Sid and Colby were best buds on and off the ice definitely counts for something. But in the more I look at it, and the more encouraged I feel that the Pens could resign Hossa — as false as the encouragement may be — I really, really like this deal.

If nothing else, it means Lord Stanley could be returning to the ‘Burgh, where it rightfully belongs.

After listening to Mark Madden ramble about the future of the Pens a little this afternoon, I had a few opinions that I decided might be best designed to be posted on here.

First of all, I want to address the, “What do the Pens do when Marc-Andre Fleury comes back?” question. While what Ty Conklin has done so far this season has been absolutely superb, you have to remember that the guy is 31 years old already. If he was really capable of playing at a level anywhere near as high as that which he’s performed since his December call-up, he would have already earned himself a starting job with a nice, long-term contract elsewhere. Fleury is still young enough that he has a future ahead of him, while Conklin is just a career back-up in the middle of a good hot streak.

That said, here are some interesting lines from Penguins’ defensemen Brooks Orpik that do make it sound as though Conklin could be more than just a flash in the pan.

“The big thing is the way he handles the puck,” Orpik said. “It makes it so much easier on the defense. It is really like having an extra defenseman out there.

“His saves speak for themselves. But one thing we have talked about as defensemen is how much easier things have been with the way he handles the puck.”

Perhaps Conklin’s performance is more than just him being on a hot streak. Maybe his stand-up style and consistent positioning are meshing well with the style of defense the Penguins like to play. One cannot help but notice that Conklin does an excellent job of controlling rebounds and always seems to be in the right place to knock down a shot. Meanwhile, he has only made a small handful of spectacular, Fleury-like saves. Maybe Michel Terrien and his defensive scheme just clicks better with a knowledgable, consistent, but not necessarily flashy goaltender? Something to consider when Fleury makes his return in the coming weeks.

The other major area of concern for the Pens down the road will be the question of adding a strong offensive winger to put next to Sidney Crosby in the coming years. Madden claimed the Pens would be much better off splitting Crosby and Evgeni Malkin up, allowing them each to center their own line, rather than placing the two together on one super-line. He referenced how Mario Lemieux had Hall of Famer Ron Francis centering the second line behind him during the Penquins stronger periods in the ’90’s, and honestly I agree with Madden there. You have to balance your talent to win hockey games.

But if, three years from now, you have Crosby and Malkin centering lines 1 and 2 respectively, while Max Talbot, arguably the best, most mucking-ist (the only word I could use to describe Maxime) third line center in the NHL, takes face-offs on the checking line. Where exactly does that leave Jordan Staal and Angelo Esposito? Staal, despite some struggles this year, still has one of the brightest futures ahead of him of maybe any 19 year old on the planet. It isn’t at all crazy to think he’ll be a 30 goal scorer year in and year out by the time he’s 22, and his improvements in the face-off circle this year would make it very tough to split him out to a wing position.

Esposito, the Penguins 1st round draft pick this past summer, has a bright, bright future ahead of him, except for his natural position is at center. Granted, I think there is still plenty of time to turn Esposito into a wing before he makes his NHL debut, even if it means holding him in the minors for an extra few months to a year.

That said, neither Esposito or Staal is a 4th line center. Both need to be on the ice, and Staal in particular needs to be at center. In my mind that leaves the Pens with two options:

A. Keep Malkin and Crosby together on line one while you build depth on the rest of the team, namely picking up another solid scorer to put next to Staal on line 2 and developing a solid core of defensemen to put in front of Fleury or whoever ends up being the Pens goalie of the future.

B. Let Malkin center the 2nd and line and use Staal as a trading piece to acquire a front line scorer, possibly Marian Hossa, who is known to be on the block this season.

It’s going to come down to a judgement decision on the Pens part, but honestly the offensive pieces are already very much in place for this team to compete for a title. Throw a better set of defenders and some consistent goaltending behind those scorers, and this team could be a serious contender in a highly competitive Eastern Conference.

Pens’ prospect Esposito making progress – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review