Lost in the shuffle: Anssi Salmela

With all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the loss of Kovalchuk, many forget we lost Anssi Salmela, too. Anssi came to us from the Devils in a trade for Niclas Havelid, meaning we pretty much now have nothing to show for Havelid. He was only hear about a year, but I enjoyed watching him play and he seemed fun off of the ice. H


This is my favorite picture of him because he's drunk as hell.


Good luck back in Jersey Anssi! You will be missed.

Focus on a Thrasher: Anssi Samela

Anssi came to the Thrashers late in the season. I didn't know much about him, but when I went over to look at the Devils' messages boards, they were all pissed about the trade and losing the young defenseman, so I figured that was a good sign!





Anssi Salmela was born on August 13, 1984 (Happy Belated Birthday!) in Nokia, Finland.





Anssi was eligible for the NHL draft in 2002, but was undrafted. He began his professional hockey career in 2003-04 with the Tappara Tampere of the Finnish SM-Liiga. Anssi played 2 seasons with the Tappara Tampere for a total of 56 games and 6 points while racking up 49 penalty minutes.





In 2005-06 Anssi was transferred to my beloved (Pasi Nurminen co-owned) Lahti Pelicans. He spent 2 seasons there playing in 104 games scoring 39 points and acquiring 117 penalty minutes.





The 2007-08 season found Anssi back playing for the Tappara Tampere. This season was a break-out season for Anssi. Playing in 56 games he scored 16 goals and 16 assists for a total of 32 points, a career high. In his fourth full season in the SM-Liiga league he led the league in points by a defenseman. This was the second season that he played in every game.





Anssi had offers from a several NHL clubs, but chose to sign a one year, two way contract with the Devils on May 22, 2008. On October 10, 2008 at the season opener, Anssi made his NHL (and North American) debut in a win against rivals, the New York Rangers.





Although Anssi played in 17 games for the New Jersey Devils, he spent most of the season with their AHL affiliate, the Lowell Devils. He played 38 games in Lowell, scoring 8 goals and 16 assists for a total of 24 points.





On March 2, 2009 Anssi was traded by the Devils to the Atlanta Thrashers for Niclas Havelid. Anssi played 2 games for the Chicago Wolves, but finished out most of the season with the Thrashers. In his second game as a Thrasher, Anssi scored his first NHL goal in a 5-1 against the Washington Capitals on March 16, 2009.


Anssi missed the last few games of the season due to injury. The Thrashers did re-sign him to a 2 year deal on June 4, 2009.





Anssi had had success on an international level as well. In 2004, he was part of the bronze medal winning Finnish team in the World Junior Championships. In 2008 he competed in the World Championships and again brought home the bronze medal. Way to go, Anssi!





I think Anssi will have a bright future and I look forward to watching him this season.

Hockey's Future had this to say about Anssi:

Talent Analysis

Salmela has a decent sized frame, standing at 5'11, 190 and has a multitude of skills. He is however, most noted for his offensive tools and mobility on the back end. His 16 goals last season can attest to that offensive skill set. He moves the puck up the ice well and is poised with the puck on his stick.

Salmela is a fiery, and intense individual known for playing a physical brand of hockey. He is not afraid to mix it up, even dropping the gloves on occasion. He can play a bit out of control at times, but for the most part plays decent in his own end of the rink.

Drop the puck already!

Vomit

Let's play a game! Try and guess which arena I'm talking about.



The Red Wings are about to hit the Ice.


They have thousands of loyal fans cheering them on.




Fans are waving signs and there is a deafening non stop chorus of "Let's Go Red Wings" and periodic chants of "Ozzy...Ozzy."



And, most notably fans are rocking Octopi.








If you guessed Joe Louis Arena....you are wrong. Good guess, but WRONG. Welcome to Phillips Arena, home of the Atlanta Thrashers. The Red Wings rolled into town Friday night and brought all of their fans with them. Since Detroit is a burned out shit hole, people tend to leave. Can't say I blame them. Atlanta being a transplant city, we get a ton of them. I think a lot of numbers are usually exaggerated about how many opposing fans are at a Thrashers game, but there were EASILY 8,000 to 10,000 Wings fans there. Our arena holds a little over 17,000.

I'd say the crowd broke down as follows:

60% Detroit fans
20% Thrashers fans
20% douche bags that don't give a shit either way but just show up to schmooze and annoy me


For whatever reason, it's good to have a full arena. Full arena = $$. It was disappointing and disheartening to see our guys getting booed in their own home arena. Apparently they didn't mind much and were happy to play in front of a large group of people. Slava Kozlov told the AJC: “Lately, we haven’t seen a lot of fans, so we were happy,” Kozlov said. “It doesn’t matter whether it was Red Wings fans or ours.” Great.


One thing I will say is the Wings fans were well behaved and friendly. Of course that's probably because a lot of them were the same fans that are usually there on the other nights wearing Thrasher jerseys.

I've sat through horrible games. (Philly and Boston come to mind) I've sat through good games with horrible people (Buffalo) This was by far the worst game experience I 've had all season. It's almost enough to make me say I'd never go to another Detroit game at Phillips, but I guess that would be hypocritical.


On to the pics.



Warm ups.



I went down to the spot I usually watch warm ups from. I could see there were a lot of Wings Jerseys. The glass was crowded and for the first time all season the owners of the seats I was in for warm ups showed up. They were OF COURSE Wings fans. They were nice though and let me stay. They didn't throw the riff-raff out.


I looked over to the portal where the Wings come out and thought "Wow, there are a lot of them." I had NO idea of what was to come. As I'm watching the large crowd, I think of Philly. They'd solve this problem with a smoke bomb or a hand full of batteries.






Here come the Thrashers. I took this pic of Kari, but when I was playing with it noticed the look between our Natalie (chick who interviews players) and Hainsey. Back off ScoJo (I call her that because she looks like Scarlett Johanson) Ron is a married man!




Bryan Little warming up.









We seem to be forever tweaking our roster this season and it seems we've been mostly made up of Chicago Wolves. Fine with me, I say all the time my favorite Thrashers are Wolves. This week we called up Joey Crabb again. I was sad to see him go in the first place, so I was glad to hear he was coming back. Welcome back!



Joey in warm ups






Bryan Little has some wardrobe malfunctions that need some "adjustments." Don't worry Bryan...nobody saw that.





Perrin warming up FAR too close to the enemy. Note all of the signs and fans on that end of the ice.






Our "regulars" were there with all of their support and signs, too.








In addition to the Joey Crabb sign, I had one for my Moose.







He liked it very much (I can TOTALLY tell)







I also made one congratulating Anssi on his first NHL goal.




Anssi liked it.








I think Kari liked it too. As always he read it. The Finnish probably caught his eye.







I got a smile from him. He's not nearly as mean looking when he smiles. He smiled a lot bigger, but that pic was kind of blurry.













A good shot of the Indiana Moose mask.

Watch out Boultsie, some one is watching and it's NOT the money you could be saving with Geico. It's Shauna!

Anssi take a shot at the net.

Kari: So I hear it's easy to be Detroit goal tender.

Conks: Yeah, it's a sweet gig. Our team is so good, I barely see any shots.

Kari: Sweet!

Conks: Congratulations on that 50 shot night you had last week.

Kari: Thanks

Conks: You know they are going to obliterate you guys, right.

Kari: Shut up.

Stuie!!!! Colin Stuart is one of my favorite recent Wolves call up. He's got speed, size and he's got a great habit of scoring short handed goals.

The 2 luckiest goalies in the NHL, Ozzy and Conklin.

Kari getting in the zone.

Hainsey looking like he's up to something.

More of the Crabb Shack. Joey had an assist that night. Welcome back indeed!

One of the best things of the night was seeing Baby Bogo on the ice. We were all worried when he took that knee-on-knee hit from Matt Cooke in the Pittsburgh game. Fortunately, he's a tough guy and shook it off.

Down at the other end of the ice, my 2nd favorite Swede is warming up. Too bad he's wearing the jersey of the very devil himself!!

I talk a lot of shit about Osgood. He flops, he dives and he cheats (I've seen him push his own net off the moorings) and he usually just isn't that good. He's a goalie though, and as a goalie lover, I do have a small bit bit of love for him. The fact he is adorable helps. I have to say though Ozzy was stellar in the game. There were several times when we yelled how the *bleep* did that not go in??? Nice job OZ. Nice job making my night even worse.

Okay, he's adorable and he was bang-on but he does TOTALLY look like Elroy Jetson.

On to the game

As well as being adorable, Ozzy pulled at his clothes a lot. I don't know if he was hot or if something itched or what, but he always pulled his jersey up.

Getting ready for play

Ozzy covering the puck.

Ex Thrasher Marian Hossa got some boos when he'd touch the puck. He really got booed when he scored.

Jiri Huddler

Hmmmmm. This looks a little Brokeback Mountain.

Datsuk: I wish I could quit you, Hank.

Stuie!!!!!

Ozzy hiding in his net. You can come out Ozzie, there are no pucks coming towards you.

I don't know what Marty is trying to do, but boy is he working hard to do it!

Ozzy seeing some action

Ozzie making a stop. If you look right above his glove, you can see the puck.

Action

Ozzy making some saves.

Ex having a discussion.

Ozzy fidgeting with his jersey again.

Ozzy showing off the junk in his trunk to one of the ice girls.

See the Wings are so horrible they broke our ice.

We had a ref that was a GIANT. He was like Herman Monster. When he stood by Toby and Perrin, he looked like Goliath.

Almost Pevs! You can see the puck wedged in Ozzy's right leg pad.

More action for Ozzy.

Moose: Damn this game sucks. I'm glad I'm not in net.

Anssi: Yeah, it sucks.

Moose: There are so many Red Wings fans here.

Anssi: Yeah. Speaking of fans...did you see your girl made me another sign.

Moose: Shut up.

Who knew that Thorburn and Franzen were an item? Apparently Reasoner didn't.

Oystrick has been full of piss and vinegar lately. He's had a few fights.

Herman Munster leading Oysters off of the ice.

In the game a puck went into the Red Wings bench and I think it must have grazed Zetterberg. Don't worry Hank, you are still the pretties girl on the Red Wings!

A thoroughly disheartening night. Go Thrashers.