Goodbye, Bob Hartley. When he was hired to coach the Thrashers in January, 2003, a lot of people speculated this was GM Don Wadell's last chance to make some kind of success of his franchise. Hartley brought Atlanta into the playoffs last season, and then had a spectacular, goalie-swapping meltdown that led to a first-round sweep out of the playoffs. Then, Atlanta failed to win a game in the first six of the season, and Hartley was gone.
Jeff Schultz alludes to some problems in the Thrasher locker room, with rumors some of the players didn't like Hartley. And things are always tough when you have Bobby "Shoot from the Hip" Holik on your team. He's never going to not share his opinions with the press. But even with all of that, Wadell, as Schultz points out, never built a competitive team. But Hartley was a good enough coach to take the heat off of Hartley, and then, when the pendulum swung the other way, Hartley was thrown under the bus.
Hartley is a great coach. His time in Atlanta had moments of genius, and moments of conceptual misfire. I'm sure he'll be back in the NHL.

Neil Best has more on hockey maybe returning to ESPN. The only reason I repeat this is that I've noticed a lot of hockey in ESPN: The Magazine the past few issues. Last issue, they did a big piece on Chris Drury and Scott Gomez coming to the Rangers. In the current issue, Bill Keating has a nice piece, not online, about how the NHL is doing OK despite low ratings. I feel like they're trying to get everyone psyched for the return of hockey. I could be wrong, though.

I like how gentle Dallas is being with Peter Forsberg.
I actually got this email from The Dallas Morning News this morning:

Dallas Stars general manager Doug Armstrong said Monday morning that he had exploratory talks with former NHL star Peter Forsberg this weekend in Sweden, but that he simply was taking advantage of a coincidence to test the temperature of the former Hart Trophy winner.

It's like the Stars got caught cheating on their wife or something. 'We weren't meeting Forsberg. We just bumped into him. It's all a misunderstanding.' The Stars could use a healthy Forberg, though. I'm just not sure why they don't want anyone to think they're interested.

What a weekend!

• The NHL continues to agonize over its schedule (login info.). I'm definitely with the conventional wisdom that says teams need to see each other more than once or twice a decade. The NHL just doesn't have enough stars in each division to make the current schedule work.
• Does anyone remember the last time Martin Havlat was healthy? This is pretty interesting: over the past two seasons, Havlat has played only 74 regular season games, for a roughly 45% regular season attendance rate. It's a good thing his contract isn't hourly, right?
• Is goalie Curtis Joseph retiring (login info.)? He might be, if no teams give him a call. When he went to Detroit, he was ready to take over the hockey world. And then, Dom Hasek came out of retirement and I think the uncertainty of the Detroit situation completely robbed Joseph of his confidence. He was really never the same goalie. And Hasek is still playing. Weird.
• PopJocks looks at the hockey week in review.
• Goodbye, Hockeybird. You'll be missed.