Little, Valabik on way back to Chicago

In about an hour, Bryan Little and Boris Valabik will board a plane back to Chicago to join the Wolves. Today was checkout day at the Thrashers practice facility, in which players clean out their lockers and get their exit physicals. It was appropriately dreary outside -- overcast with a bit of rain. Little and Valabik seemed to be the happiest ones in the place, since they know their seasons are not over.

Little said he would probably move back in with Scott Lehman in Chicago, who he had lived with while there earlier this year. He said he thinks Lehman has been driving his car while he was away, having sold his own. Apparently those two don't talk on the phone as much as Valabik and Pavelec do or Little would know what his car was doing.

Little has shaved off all of his blond curls, saying it's getting too warm now. I said he might be sorry he did that when he gets to Chicago because it's still pretty cold. He asked me if it was still snowing there. No, but that's not a crazy question, unfortunately.

I asked him a little bit about Mark Recchi and whether the advice he gave was the fatherly type. "I think he might be as old as my dad," Little joked. "But don't tell him I said that."

In a semi-related move, defenseman Chad Denny is expected back in Gwinnett. The Gladiators begin their playoffs on Tuesday against Charlotte.