A sports car speeding through the night. A celebrity athlete at the wheel. One or more friends beside him.

A tragic crash takes the life of a player. The team mourns but then must continue its season.

The Atlanta Thrashers have been trying to cope with that struggle since forward Dan Snyder died days after a Sept. 29 car accident with teammate Dany Heatley driving a Ferrari.

The Flyers, who play the Thrashers tomorrow at the Wachovia Center, went through the same ordeal when goalie Pelle Lindbergh died after crashing his Porsche on Nov. 10, 1985.

How Bob Hartley's team handles the death of Snyder and loss of Heatley - he likely will miss the season after extensive knee surgery - will determine the club's fate. So far, the Thrashers have been a surprise, with a 7-6-3-1 record and 18 points.

"You'd expect a young team like that would not respond well," said Brian Propp, who played with Lindbergh in 1985. "One plus for them is having Brad McCrimmon there as an assistant. He saw firsthand what happened here with Pelle. He knew about the player meetings at Mike Keenan's house which pulled the team together. I am sure Brad's had a lot of input with Hartley."

The death of a teammate lingers. Unlike Snyder, a marginal NHL player, Lindbergh was an emerging star expected to lead the Flyers to the Stanley Cup. Though that didn't happen, the Flyers pulled together to win the Patrick Division in 1985-86, but then lost in the first round of the playoffs.

"We still talk about it to this day," said Mark Howe, who played for the Flyers that year. "I remember we had a break in the schedule when the accident happened. When we came back, I scored a goal against Edmonton, went back to the bench, and I wanted to cry. It was always present that season."

Atlanta considered postponing its season opener against the Columbus Blue Jackets, scheduled for Oct. 9, four days after Snyder died. The team decided to play after being urged to do so by Snyder's family.

The Thrashers mourned most publicly that night at Philips Arena. Before the game, the lights dimmed and a bagpiper performed "Amazing Grace." Video screens showed vignettes of Snyder's life and career as players tapped their sticks on the ice in tribute.

The next day, the team, including Heatley, traveled to Elmira, Ontario, to attend Snyder's funeral.

Today, the Thrashers are trying hard to put the tragedy behind them, though it trails them to every NHL city.

"Everywhere we go we get asked about it," said captain Shawn McEachern, a veteran who speaks for many of the Thrashers these days regarding Snyder, who was extremely popular in Atlanta. "You can get sick of it, but it's something that happened to us and we're dealing with it the best way we can right now. Being with the guys on the ice is kind of a relief."

"Our players deserve a lot of credit," said Hartley, who has a history of bonding with young players going back to his days with Hershey. "We've been able to park the tragedy behind us for a couple of hours every day to enable us to play a game. Good people come together in tough times."

Remaining together is tougher. Keenan, who was fired Sunday as coach of the Florida Panthers, was in his second year of NHL coaching with the Flyers when Lindbergh died.

"Mike became human for a week," Howe recalled. "First couple of practices, we made mistakes because Pelle was on our minds. Normally, Mike wouldn't tolerate a mistake for 30 seconds. But he did. He handled things very well."

Keenan said the team's character pulled the Flyers through yet conceded it took a full year for the effect of Lindbergh's loss to diminish in the dressing room.

"They were professional in their approach, really mature and grounded," Keenan said. "That's why our team was successful, that's why we did well, because we had really strong people. They were very young, but had good character, and I had to help them grow together as a group as well.

"We had the youngest team in the league then, and when you're young you feel invincible, and think these things will never happen to you, and it's a real dose of reality, on how fragile life is."

The two passengers in Lindbergh's car survived his crash. Heatley, an emerging star, will forever be scarred by his best friend's death. And he still faces criminal charges.

"Dany is going to heal physically sooner than he will mentally," said Thrashers general manager Don Waddell. "He's a good kid. It's something he's going to have to live with the rest of his life and have to deal with. You know, it was an accident. Accidents happen all the time, unfortunately. There's lots of pain and suffering that go with it. I think being around the team every day, being around his teammates, that's a big step in the right direction for him."