The early season is providing all sorts of opportunities for insane, irrational hope. Two decades plus as a hockey fan and I'm still already casting caution to the winds, thinking "Jose Theodore IS the answer in Colorado!" and "The Thrashers never needed Marc Savard! The Hurricanes are done! And Kari Lehtonen -- is it too early to declare him the best goalie of all time?"

I know Jes is just waiting for Kari's groin to tear like a wet paper towel, and my head tells me it's a bit early to be getting excited and overconfident, but my heart says "maybe they've made his groin better than the average human's. It's like the Six Million Dollar Man's groin!"

Foolish, yes. But the Thrashers have started off 3-0-1 with only one line really doing much (hello? Ilya? You aren't only on the Thrashers, you're on my damn fantasy team -- some help please), and "Kärpät" (or "Kärppä," as a commenter said his nickname should truly be rendered) is giving Thrasher fans all sorts of reasons to giggle and swoon. Watching him last night, against the Tenkrat-less Bruins, he looked great -- "unbeatable" is a bit of a cliche, but it's been a long week already, so indulge me. Very confident -- reminiscent of the feeling Avalanche fans once got from Patrick Roy, that we weren't gonna see any more goals against

The optimism probably won't last. Atlanta's fifth in the league in shots against, which is helping -- and with a pretty mediocre defense, I don't see it continuing. The thin corps of centers is already being shaken up, to little effect. But a week into the new season, I'm going to revel without guilt, and pretend that our lights-out goalie is enough to carry the Thrashers deep into the playoffs. Birth of a legend!

(A search for "Kari Lehtonen" on YouTube turns up nothing, so I can't follow Jes's lead with some amazing save footage. Just searching for "Lehtonen," however, turns up a lot of freakish video of some female bodybuilder, so if that's your thing, go wild.)