One of the most debated parts of hockey between coaches is whether or not it’s more important to leverage offense or defense. Most coaches agree that the balance is somewhere in the middle. Other coaches are just plain aggressive, or incredibly defensive.

Unfortunately for them, either one of these strategies rarely work. That seems to be the problem that the Atlanta Thrashers are having this season. They are concentrating too much on scoring goals and are getting burned defensively.

They can’t even blame their trouble on injuries. They only have two players that are currently on the IR, granted one is a defender and the other is the backup goalie.

However, that wouldn’t even matter anyway. There is no excuse for any defense to play this badly, even if it does have a player missing.

Recently, defense has been an even bigger problem. The Thrashers are winless in their last nine, and in those nine games, they have allowed at least three goals every game. Total, they have allowed 40 goals during those games, averaging just over 4 goals per game.

Their offense hasn’t been nearly as dreadful. They are actually in the top five in the NHL.

To me, the problem is that they spent too much time developing the offense. The front office did a terrible job putting together a solid defense that would help them win games. Now, there’s little hope for the future because they have no way to stop goals.

That’s the biggest problem that the Thrashers are going to have to overcome in the off-season, using a draft pick to help improve their defense. It’s definitely something that they need to improve, because this whole “score more” philosophy is failing miserably.

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