By JOHN MANASSO

Against Carolina, Ilya Kovalchuk was his own hurricane.

Scoring two goals and amassing five minor penalties, Kovalchuk was a whirlwind of activity, bouncing bodies and making heads spin in a 4-1 victory over the Hurricanes in the Thrashers' final home exhibition game before 10,232 at Philips Arena.

"It's an exhibition game," Kovalchuk said. "We won the game. I scored a couple of goals."

After scoring six goals in the preseason last year in what turned out to be the omen for a successful 29-goal rookie campaign, Kovalchuk was having a relatively quiet camp. Until Saturday.

In the first period, the spirited 19-year-old Russian scored his second goal of the preseason on the power play. The second period marked Kovalchuk as the focal point of activity. At 1:26, he was called for interference. At 10:33, he received a double minor for cross checking and roughing -- for jabbing Sean Hill after the whistle.

Five minutes later, perhaps the victim of a bad call, he was sent to the box for tripping Josef Vasicek.

"If Ilya's going to score two goals every game, he can take some penalties," Thrashers wing Slava Kozlov said. "He made some mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. It was an exhibition game. He knows his problems."

Thrashers coach Curt Fraser promised to have a friendly talk with Kovalchuk on the flight for today's 3 p.m. game in North Dakota. Fraser will have to impress upon Kovalchuk that teams will try to get him off his game by taunting him physically to get him to retaliate and take bad penalties.

"He was taking some hits, this guy [the referee] called everything," Dany Heatley said. "I think he knows he can't be doing that."

For the second game in a row (both against Carolina), the Thrashers' defense allowed one goal and kept the number of shots low (25). With the exception of David Tanabe's deflection goal on the power play, the Thrashers were efficient, killing off the next six.