Logging a hat trick

Any time a team comes to town, any hound worth his or her salt will have two to three players at the top of their wish list.

For Atlanta, it should be a no-brainer – top scorers Marian Hossa and Ilya Kovalchuk and promising goalie Kari Lehtonen.

The pucks shown above? All I have are two words: Mission accomplished.

As a whole, though, the Thrashers are a decent signing team. Nearly everyone, save for Andy Sutton and Niclas Havelid, stopped to sign. Sutton and Havelid said they’d sign once they put their stuff on the bus, but never came back out.

Players who signed four cards each were Garnet Exelby, Johan Hedberg, Lehtonen (whose last name rhymes with, as I shouted during the game, "Lets Them In") and Steve Rucchin. Also signing multiples were Eric Boulton, Niko Kapanen, Jon Sim, Jim Slater and Vitali Vishnevsky.

Bobby Holik, Hossa, Kovalchuk, Slava Kozlov and Scott Mellanby were strictly one-per signers. Believe it or not, so was Brad Larsen.