Report: Waddell Asked to Leave - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

ESPN.com's Scott Burnside reports that Atlanta Thrashers general manager Don Waddell has been asked to step aside.

Waddell has been asked by the Atlanta Thrashers to give up his duties and accept another management position, ESPN.com has learned.

Waddell, one of the managers of the U.S. entry in the World Championships, will apparently make his decision after the tournament, a source close to the team said Friday.

Ownership is believed to have given Waddell a contract extension earlier this season, even though the team has never won a playoff game since entering the league in 1999. But even though ownership has been preaching patience and insisting publicly that it supports the work done by Waddell, multiple sources close to the team say that ownership has been rethinking that stance after the Thrashers finished 28th overall this season.

The assumption, the source told ESPN.com, is that if Waddell declines to take the as-yet-unidentified management position, he will leave the organization.

Considering how bad Atlanta was this season, and how bad they've been (outside of one playoff appearance), this move was probably inevitable. Burnside's article chronicles some of Waddell's bad moves, highlighted by the Alex Zhitnik-for-Braydon Coburn swap that looks bad for multiple reasons. For one, Coburn has emerged as a top defenseman for Philadelphia, and then there's the fact that Zhitnik is old, makes a lot of money, and didn't even play down the stretch.

The Atlanta franchise has one legit star in Ilya Kovalchuk, but there isn't much else happening. Whoever takes over for Waddell has a ton of work to do.