You know, for a pessimist, I’m pretty optimistic about the Thrashers. Not just now, but since I’ve been a fan. Admittedly, I came to the team after the lockout and am not as burned out as many long-term Thrashaholics.

That said, I find the recent turn to optimism to be surprising, refreshing, but a bit late.

Let me explain:

I’ve felt that the Thrashers have always been one piece short of a winning team. In 2005-2006, that piece was a healthy goalie. In 2006-2007, Kari was far healthier, but that missing piece was a game-changing defenseman. In 2007-2008, we witnessed the meteoric rise of Tobias Enstrom, but we were missing our contract extension for Marian Hossa. Remember, just a few weeks before he was traded, we were leading the Southeast Division. In 2008-2009, Bryan Little has ably filled in for Hossa, but we were one thing short. What was it?

My thesis is that we were missing the confidence to finish games. Possibly it was because we *felt* like a bad team, possibly it was because we *were* a bad team. (I think the former.) We got rid of some under-performers (Williams, Christensen) and some soon-to-be-departed-anyway veterans (Havelid, Schneider) and started winning games. Who wins by removing pieces?

Sure, Kari has stepped up his game considerably. Naming Kovalchuk as captain has put some fire back into the team. All of these are good things… but does anybody really think Kovalchuk wasn’t already giving it 100% before being named captain?

So here’s the thing that was missing: luck. Luck may be considered a non-factor, but let’s face it: every game has a goal that could have been a save or a save that could have been a goal. There are elements of randomness that determine the very close cases. Let’s analyze how close the Thrashers really were playing all season.

An important thing to look at: goal differential. Bob Hartley, whatever you may think about it, had it right. If you score more goals than you give up over the course of the season, you’ve got a good chance to make the playoffs. Let’s look at the GD for our best teams:

• San Jose: +57
• Detroit: +58
• Boston: +73

Now how about some of the worst:

• Tampa: -51
• New York Islanders: -52
• Colorado: -43

So where do the Thrashers stand? -26. While not a good stat, you’ll notice it’s significantly better than the other bottom-dwellers. What other teams have a goal differential in that range?

• Los Angeles: -26
• Dallas: -18
• Toronto: -37
• St. Louis: -13

Most of these teams are not competing for a playoff spot, but they are considered far better teams than we are. The point that I’m trying to make here is that, while we’ve lost a lot of games, we haven’t necessarily lost them by a lot. In fact, if you ignore empty net goals allowed (7) it becomes even closer. So let’s look at how many goals we’ve won (or lost) by. I’ll keep both empty net goals for and against in this chart.

I know this chart seems confusing off the bat, but let’s take a second to go over it. The most important color in this chart is the light blue. Light blue shows games the Thrashers lost by a single goal (not counting Shootout losses). You can see that in October, something like half of our games were lost by a single goal. That number was smaller in November, a much better month for us, but was high again in December (over 30% of our games). In January, this team lost several games by 2 and more goals (greens at the top of the bars). Many of those were prior to Kovalchuk being named captain, however (1/4 -3, 1/6 -2, 1/10 -4).

On the other hand, let’s look at games we won by a goal. We had a good November (~25% won by a goal) but Otherwise, we haven’t won many games by a single goal. Our shootout skills have somewhat saved us (6 games won in the shootout this year, only one lost) but overall, we’ve won very few games by a single goal. In fact, while we’ve won 11 games by 3 or more goals, we’ve only won 13 by 1 (7 in regulation/OT, 6 in SO).

So, let’s make this a bit simpler. One goal games:

• Won: 13 (4 regulation, 3 OT, 6 shootout)
• Lost: 19 (13 regulation, 5 OT, 1 shootout)

To me, that’s the thing we’ve been missing. 4-13 in games decided by one goal in regulation. If that were more even, say 8-9, this team would be far better off. Or perhaps if we kept it tied and moved into overtime more often, say on 7 extra games? With our OT record, that’d be 4W 3OTL for an extra 11 points. That’d put us in 10th place (not counting points other teams would have not gotten from the change).

To sum it all up: the real problem with the Thrashers this year hasn’t been skill or talent or any of that, it’s been their inability to win close games. Fix that and this is a far, far more competitive team.