DEPTH CHARTS

Connor snubbed by NHL scouts due to stature

You need two hands to count the number of NHL first round draft picks playing in the WCHA this season, but one of the conference’s most thrilling performers is not among them. Michigan Tech sopho-more winger Chris Conner, 20, has 17 goals in 20 games, ranking him second in the nation in goals-per-game average. He has also had one of his scoring plays featured on ESPN’s SportsCenter highlights. “He is, I think, the most exciting player in college hockey,” said Huskies coach Jamie Russell. “He’s instant offense.” Listed at 5-foot-7 and 175 pounds, Connor gets far less notice than NHL first-rounders such as Zach Parise of North Dakota and Thomas Vanek of Minnesota, but he is making a name for himself. “A guy like that you need to respect regardless of his size,” said…

2003-04 NHL STATISTICS

Low budget, but high speed

Debate the rules to death, but if there were 20 coaches who coached like Bob Hartley, 20 teams that had the courage to play the game the way the Atlanta Thrashers are playing, the frantic rhetoric over the state of the game would be but a whisper. The Atlanta Thrashers began the second half of 2003-04 in a fierce battle for first place in the Southeast Division with Tampa Bay. The Thrashers are on pace for the best season in the team’s five-year history, playing wide-open, “let’s play to win” not “hope not to lose” hockey. Through the first half of the season, games in which the Atlanta Thrashers played averaged six goals, most of any team. “They’re an exciting hockey team,” says John Tortorella, coach of the Lightning. Some nights it works. A…