Answer the question below and send your response to thrashers.mailbag@atlantaspirit.com by 2 pm and you could be the winner of two tickets to tonight's game. Please read all of the rules below.

Please read the official rules and regulations for the contest before entering and be aware that you will have to sign and return a form or two if you are selected. You also must be 18 years of age to win Submit your answers (thrashers.mailbag@atlantaspirit.com), and check back at 2:00 p.m. for the answer and to see if you've won!

Thank you to The Thomas Eye Group for sponsoring this year's trivia contest.

Abbreviated rules:
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. The Blueland Blog Trivia Contest sponsored by Thomas Eye Group (the "Contest") is open to legal residents of the U.S. and Georgia who are at least 18 years of age at the time of entry, reside within 75 miles of Philips Arena and have Internet access as of the date and time the Contest was first made known to the public. Subject to additional terms and conditions of the Official Rules. Click here for Official Rules . One (1) entry per person per Entry Period. Entry Period is from 10AM EST to 2PM EST each Thrashers home game day. Odds of winning depend on number of correct entries received. Total AMV of prizes: $2,378. Void wherever prohibited. Entry forms must be filled out in full. Contest ends April 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM EST.

The pictures keep rolling in for our Thrashers On Vacation page and we're truly amazed at some of the places you guys have been. Brazil. Iceland. Australia. South Africa. China.If you haven't seen the photo gallery yet check it out. We only put up one picture from each trip (we're not flickr) so here are a few that we didn't have room for:

Justin D. Cotton at Tiananmen Square in China.

Justin D. Cotton  shows of his towel and 2008 All-Star shirt at Tiananmen Square in China.

Justin D. Cotton at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.

Benjamin gives Ovechkin the thumbs at the Capitals' practice rink in Arlington, Virginia.

Keep sending us your pictures and we'll keep putting them up.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone. Things will be pretty quiet around here for the next few days, but if you haven't been keeping up on your reading make sure you check out this collection of prospect stories.

AJC.com: Bryan Little
The Province: Chad Denny
AJC.com: Nathan Oystrick
AJC.com: Brett Sterling
Blueland Blog: Bryan Little
NHL.com: Jordan LaVallee
AJC.com: Mark Popovic
AJC.com: Boris Valabik

If you're out relaxing on the weekend, whether it's in Atlanta or on the road somewhere, make sure you snap a picture of yourself in some Thrashers gear and send it in to us.

Here are some long overdue pictures from the trip to NY last week.

One of the highlights of the trip from a "well I never thought I'd find myself doing this" standpoint had to be the bus-ride from the hotel on 52nd to Madison Square Garden on 33rd. Have you ever seen Manhattan traffic at 4:30 in the afternoon on a business day? It's not pretty. So as we all loaded onto the bus on Tuesday and Wednesday there was a uniformed officer waiting beside the bus. When we gave the signal he pulled out in his squad car, turned on the lights and away we went with our own police escort. Want to see New York pedestrians and motorists get upset in a real hurry? Make them wait for  a bus full of guys they don't recognize. The looks (and gestures) that we got were priceless. A 25-block short drive that should have taken about 30 minutes took five or ten. "we're here way too early," cracked Bobby Holik both days. "Can we circle the block a couple of times?"

Eric Boulton and Brad "Beast" McCrimmon with one of New York's finest. Who's protecting who?

Madison Square Garden- the "world's Most Famous Arena."

They call the seats the reds and the blues. They've faded to pink and teal. 

The famous MSG ceiling and scoreboard.

Shortly before the Rangers pulled ahead for the final time in the series.

The end of the road for the 2006-07 Thrashers.

So, you're growing a playoff beard. Good for you. Now take a picture of it and send it in to us, along with your name and where you're from. Then send in pictures as it fills out as the Thrashers go deeper and deeper in the playoffs. There's nothing on the line except beard-growing pride, but why wouldn't you want to chronicle your hair-growing exploits for all of Blueland to see? Send us your pictures and we'll post. No beard is too scraggly, patchy or faint to show off.

While you're at it don't miss this blog post about the Thrashers predictions for best playoff beard on the team.

And ladies, don't feel like this is all about the men.

I was going to write something about not panicking and keeping things in perspective but The Falconer beat me to the punch. Good stuff. those posts always look better coming from a fan than they do coming from a guy that works for the team.

I really thought the guys played a fairly solid (albeit conservative) game on Saturday. They were strong in their won end, held an explosive offense to less than 30 shots. Despite going 0-3 on the power play the Thrashers did a better job once they were set up than they've been doing lately. There was more movement, more shots, and more action around the crease. They just didn't get into the zone often enough when they had the advantage.

In their own end the guys were solid. clearing attempts could have been stronger but they severely limited Pittsburgh's scoring chances and Lehtonen got the support he's been missing recently. Like Scott Mellanby said in the AJC, it was one of the team's strongest games of the last few weeks, despite the loss. If the offense had have been clicking it would have been a different story. 

A key to making that happen on Wednesday in Florida will be to have Eric Belanger back. Belanger missed the second half of the game on Saturday with a minor leg injury, but he practiced today and there's no reason to think he won't be ready for Wednesday night. So that's good news, right?

Nothing to report on Jon Sim's condition yet. All indications are that the surgery went well. Now it's a matter of seeing how quickly he recovers.

I'll be up in Duluth tomorrow morning for practice so I'll see what I can find out. If anyone has questions they'd like answered by players feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll see what I can do.

On a side note it was nice to see Keith Tkachuk, Kari Lehtonen and Brad Larsen enjoying the Hawks game yesterday. The Hawks fell to the Dallas Mavericks but they kept it close, losing 104-97. Here are the guys with Dominique Wilkins, one of the most approachable guys you'll ever meet.

Isn't winning fun?

Yesterday at the morning skate I was chatting with Craig Custance from the AJC (based on the response to yesterday's trivia questions most of you read his blog) and I mentioned that Sim really needed to score. He'd gone almost a month without a goal and was in danger of being bumped off of Kovy's line. Fast forward to the first period and there's Jon Sim scoring the second goal of he game. I ran into Dan Kamal between periods up in the press box and I predicted Sim would get another one so he could tie his career high for goals in a season. Mission accomplished. Jon Sim finished the night with 17 goals on the season, the same number he scored all of last season. Other milestones from the game:

• The Thrashers tied the franchise record with five straight wins.
• Slava Kozlov picked up his 400th career assist and is one goal short of 300. How sweet would it be if his 300th goal was also his 700th point?
• The Thrashers tied the team record by returning to 13 games above .500.
• The team tied the franchise record for goals in the second period with four.
• Kari Lehtonen played in his 100th career game.
• Marian Hossa tied the team record with points in nine straight games.

Also worth mentioning:

• Eric Belanger has six goals and four assists in 11 games as a Thrasher. He had 20 points in 56 games with Carolina.
• Alexei Zhitnik has six assists in five games with Atlanta. He had 19 assists in 61 games with Philly and the Islanders.

And how about Keith Tkachuk? Does he know how to stick up for a teammate or what? I'm still waiting for hockeyfights.com to post the video (TSN has it but I hate their video player- it takes forever to load, if it loads).

UPDATE: Hockeyfights.com has it right here.

I love that Kovy stood up for Hossa and I love that Walt came tearing in and schooled Bouillon. A lot of people are complaining about the 10-minute misconduct he got (it wasn't a misconduct

Everyone except the Holik line got in on the goal party (poor Jaroslav Halak) as six players had multi-point games and 10 Thrashers picked up points, including two more for "Zhits" and another assist for Havelid on the blueline. There honestly wasn't a single player on the roster who stood out as having a bad game, and the Thrashers goals for have finally caught up to their goals against for the first time in a while. Now if only Kovy could keep up this tear and get back to being a plus player like he was earlier in the season.