CSKA Moscow winger Slava Kozlov.

Former NHLer and newly acquired CSKA Moscow forward Slava Kozlov says he hasn’t had any problems adapting to his Russian club.

- I had been preparing to my comeback to Russia.  When I played for Atlanta I already planned to try myself in the KHL. It turned out that in the end I got back to CSKA — to the club which I had left 18 years ago. So I don’t have any troubles with adaptation in Russia.

-I’m surprised by the new league. The KHL has a very high level of hockey. Organizational issues in the CSKA are OK, too. We have all the conditions to show our best game.

CSKA Slava Kozlov

Photos and interview (c) official CSKA website.

OK.  First things first.  A few notes on the Thrashers.  And, no, not game notes.   We don’t do that here.  The Associated Press and TSN do that much better than we possibly could. Why reinvent the already wonderful wheel?

Item A:  Kovalchuk on Semin’s Crosby Rant, the new U.S. President and more >>

Items B1 and B2:  A couple of remarks from the comments section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution site brought on the giggles:

• Hey, isn’t Tampa still paying Feaster, Tortorella, and now Melrose … to NOT do ANYTHING for them? And they’re paying Brian Lawton, too! If there were a “salary cap” for paying people NOT to work for you, the Tampa Bay Lightning would be over it. (more)
  Oh dear!
• Goalie development is fine, but what’s there to develop? In case of Pavelec, he is far from being technically savvy out there, but the guy is a winner: he has a dominating presence in the crease and he is in the game mentally. Lehtonen is near perfect technically most of the time. But he is not in it all the time mentally. His Niittymaki hang up is just ridiculous. How do you develop from here? (more)
  His Niittymaki complex is ridiculous, but this made me laugh and laugh — almost as much as knowing he was once known as The Hamburgler!

Item C: It really bothers me that TSN never seems to edit its pages. Are there no copyeditors there? I worked for a major news network’s website for 7+ years and to have a “Thrashers squaked by…” type error on the site all night would get you in trouble. This is a major issue at TSN. Great hockey coverage, serious copyediting meltdowns. (Referencing the text under the video on TSN.com “Johan Hedberg stood tall and made 27 saves as the Thrashers squaked past the Hurricanes.”)

It’s also somewhat debatable to say the Thrashers “squeaked by.” But that’s an argument for another time.