A veteran of hockey's border wars, Jody Hull will never complain about anyone who gives him a job.
Although he was dumped by a Stanley Cup contender right onto an expansion heap last June, Hull has had enough years of proving himself to not appreciate the chance of donning a cool-looking uniform and venturing into a new arena beneath volleys of pyrotechnics next week, as Atlanta welcomes its second NHL franchise.
Better luck this time.
"I realize it's all a part of the business," said Hull, who thought he'd found a career rebirth last year as a checking-line winger and penalty-killing specialist in Philadelphia and may not even have a secure stay in Atlanta where he was left unprotected for the waiver draft.
"They (Flyers) made a business decision about me in Philadelphia, and I can accept it. I think this new opportunity will be exciting. They're giving me a different role than I've had in the past few years. I think they'll expect me to take on more of a scoring role, and I'm looking forward to that."
Whether the good sports fans of Atlanta, who usually idle away their October leisure hours by performing the single-armed wave at Turner Field or the Dirty Bird dance at the Georgia Dome, will support a team that considers Jody Hull a scorer remains to be seen. But when those clean-cut songbirds called the Thrashers debut before the homefolks Oct. 2 against the Devils, it'll be a second commencement for major-league hockey in Atlanta -- and another chapter in the NHL's frenzied plan of pushing its game onto people who live by ponds that never freeze.
So why do they think it'll stick this time?
"I've been through this before," said Gord Murphy, a former 10th-round draft pick who has stuck in the NHL for 11 years, and is now the Thrashers' highest-paid defenseman. "I went to Florida during their expansion draft (in 1993). Some guys come into a situation like this with a negative attitude, but playing on an expansion team can be very rewarding."
Translating those rewards into profits for all these investors of warm-weather hockey teams cannot be certain. In the case of the Panthers, the team that Murphy and Hull helped build into an unlikely Stanley Cup finalist just three years into the club's existence, there has been a new building and sale of public stock to help secure the financial stakes.
|  | | The Atlanta Thrashers hope goalie Damian Rhodes doesn't have to look back into the net for pucks too often this season. |
There has also been a proportionate measure of success on the ice in South Florida, a basic ingredient in any sports franchise's attempt at establishing roots. From that two-folded point of view, the Thrashers' prospects seem bright. They have the seemingly limitless corporate backing of Time-Warner, and the good fortune of being logistically situated with their own kind of goal-poor, dream-big teams in the Southeast Division.
Like most of Atlanta's division rivals, the strength of this team is defense, as Murphy, Chris Tamer, Darryl Shannon and Kevin Dean are all solid veterans. Behind them are two reliable goalies. Damian Rhodes, who was good enough to start in Ottawa, although the Senators opted for Ron Tugnutt. Behind him and coming up fast is Norm Maracle, who was never given a chance in Detroit and will try to make the Red Wings pay for that. These guys will focus most of their attention on saving games, as people like Andrew Brunette and Terry Yake will be counted on to score. Ugh.
But at least they'll be lining up against nonplayoff teams Washington, Tampa Bay and Florida on most nights. Not every expansion club has had such good fortune.
"We knew going in that we would have to play Detroit and Dallas a lot," said Barry Trotz, head coach of the Nashville Predators, who entered the league a year ago looking like an aperitif for its Central Division foes. "So we built our team for speed. Detroit and Dallas and Colorado are all teams that won with speed, whereas the Eastern Conference clubs are more into trapping and grinding styles. So in the expansion draft we went more for quickness rather than toughness so that we could match up with teams in the West."
Trotz said that construction project was completed only after hard looks at the expansion processes in South Florida and Ottawa. He didn't say anything about Tampa or San Jose, probably because mismanagement is something you never want to mimic.
"The Panthers were built with solid veterans, and it came together very quickly with them," Trotz said. "But they got old, and they got old very fast. In Ottawa, they had a lot of good draft choices and brought in some good young players with speed. But they didn't have enough older players with character and toughness there. We were searching for something in the middle there."
For a while, it worked. The Predators showed a knack of tying up more skilled teams and coming up with big goals at crucial times of its own. They were in the playoff hunt in the West until after the All-Star break, but then things began to turn. A lack of scoring depth caught up with Nashville in the second half, and it fell fast out of playoff contention, finishing 19 games under .500.
"I don't think people realized that we had the second-most injuries in the NHL last year," Trotz said. "Washington was crying about having 500 (man-games lost) in injuries, but we had about 400. So with our lack of depth, the injuries we had in the second half really showed up. In the last 10 games we had no one left. It was almost embarrassing, some of the lineups we had to put on the ice."
Although drafting rules have enabled the league's expansion teams to expedite their growing process, no expansion team has made the playoffs in its first year. And in the expansions of the 1990s, the Panthers' third-year trip to the finals was the quickest any of those teams went to the postseason.
Since the Thrashers cater to a major market and are backed by such deep corporate pockets, their own plan of ascension might be on a more accelerated schedule. Not exactly win-now, but no five-year playoff plan, either.
For now, club president Harvey Schiller said he thinks general manager Don Waddell has the club "fitting the plan," essentially building for the future while putting together a defensively oriented team with depth in goal, one that should compete on most nights, and especially in its low-rent division.
"You don't go into a season here thinking you're going to win a championship, necessarily," Hull said. "But you have to believe you can compete every night. Obviously, when you're in a situation like we are, you have to think defense-first, because that's how you win games.
"If we can capitalize on every opportunity, we'll score our share. But we know we'll have to keep the number of goals-against down. That's our first priority. It's the only way we will be able to succeed."
It is an approach any expansion club could model, and one in which Trotz said Atlanta laid out after several trips last season to see how Nashville built its team and its marketing strategy.
"We went into the community and got its support," Trotz said. "You have to sell the game on and off the ice."
Part of that selling strategy for the Thrashers will be to convince their own players to fill various roles. Players like Jody Hull revel in challenges like that. Maybe they won't sell a lot of autographed jerseys, but they'll do anything they can to sell this new team to a prospective audience.
Shake hands, sign autographs ... and win enough games from the Lightning, Hurricanes, Capitals and Panthers to try to make it all look legit.
Rob Parent covers the NHL for the Delaware County (Pa.) Times.
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Atlanta Thrashers preview
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