BoltsBay - In Tampa. In the rafters. In denial.

Seven tenths and a shootout

2009-10-09T14:05:00.016-04:00

Last night: home opener, big to-do, the unfortunate inclusion of thunderstix, promotional swag flowing freely. Full introduction of the team and staff as they came out onto the ice, complete with light shows and smoke cannons. I'm not sure what the attendance figures were, officially, but from where I sat the place looked about two thirds full.

For fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds things looked good. Devils scored, Lightning scored more. Stamkos got two goals, Marty got two assists. (I am starting to think that, no matter what it says on paper, the top line is the one that Marty's on.) Nets were crashed off the posts a few times. Malone took a bounce off Brodeur's head, and both he and his stick went spinning into the air. Bolts outshot the Devils by a healthy margin. Hedman proved that he is, in fact, mean on the inside, and took his defensive duties seriously.

Then Smith went down. You can see what happened in the recap here: Malone tried to check Langenbrunner and they both hit Smith with enough force to knock his mask off. The fans -- except for the Token Obnoxious Drunk Dude -- went quiet at this and thought about concussions. It's impressive how quiet several thousand people can be, when they put their minds to it. Turns out he'd wrenched his spine in the impact, and picked up a cut on his face. After this was tended to he got back up. Crowd cheered, net was hoisted back into place, and the game went on.

Things looked good until there were 0.7 seconds left, when the Devils picked up a muffled bounce and slipped it past Smith. Nobody knew what happened, at first, as the goal came from a scrum in front of the net and the in-house replays couldn't agree on how much time was left. The Jersey fans thought it was in with enough time; the Tampa fans disagreed with all the profanity they could muster. The refs phoned Toronto, who ruled the goal good, and at that point I think we all knew what would happen.

For the other fifty-nine minutes the team looked pretty solid. Surprisingly so, considering the fiasco of last year and the fact that there's still some sorting-out to be done, this early on.

Hey, I know. Crazy stuff can happen at any time and you never leave your seat until the players are off the ice. Still, we're three games into the season and already I'm sick of shootouts.

Second verse, same as the first

2009-10-05T15:21:00.006-04:00

One game, one loss, six goals against, and one injured defenseman. Not the best start.

Playing with five defensemen most of the night, the Lightning allowed Atlanta time and space, a deadly no-no for a team with talent like Ilya Kovalchuk. But even the weak, timid play at the blue line didn't cause too many issues. Atlanta's strength came from a seemingly porous Lightning defense once established in the zone, with far too many cross ice passes making it through without a hitch. It was blatant on Atlanta's second goal, as well as most of its power play chances. And despite some odd bounces that produced two of Atlanta's goals, Smith could have been better.

But, it is only one game. The big three all got in on the scoring, and Malone played a strong game. Stamkos was flying around the ice and both top lines produced consistent pressure. While Downie looked at times unable to keep up with the creativity of Vinny and Tanguay, he did provide quickness and aggressive skating to the group. The power play also looked good, even when it didn't score.

The team could have netted five or six in this game, and will need to bury some of those chances going forward. Vinny and Stamkos each had tough but opportune shots at open nets that went wide that could have changed the game in the first. That said, the Lightning doesn't want to trade chances all game, and tighter play in its own end likely produces a win.

Both promising and disappointing. But only one game.

The worst seat in the house

2009-09-21T16:00:00.004-04:00

My seats in the upper level may not place me all that close to the ice, but I still have some inherent advantages over guys like Jaroslav Halak when they visit the St. Pete Times Forum.

You see, Halak is one of those guys that always cheers for the opponents, while I root for the home team. Halak invariably wears the other team's jersey, while mine matches that of the Lightning. My seat is made of hard plastic.

But Halak is stuck on a stool.

You see, most nights Halak plays second string to Carey Price in the Montreal net. But when Halak is the backup on the road in Tampa, he gets to feel like the dunce of Les Habitants by sitting in the corner, away from the boys, between two sections stands, where the guy launching T-shirts between periods usually resides.

So is the life of the visiting backup goalie in the Forum.

I can't quite recall when this began, but for at least a couple of seasons now, the visiting team's backup goalie is relegated to this unceremonious position. He is surrounded by Forum ushers and security, as though he's being held for questioning. He generally hangs with some member of his team's staff, as though he's there to represent his client.

I have a good view of this spot, and I rarely see any conversation between the nearby fans and the backup. In fact, fans in those neighboring sections are often allowed to walk through that area to reach the concourse, meaning Halak and company can't even get an unobstructed view.

So to all fans in 103 and 104, just remember when you're walking on by:

Down in front, eh?

Summer Roundup

2009-09-18T10:25:00.005-04:00

Zenon ~~Hanson~~ Konopka would like to remind you that the season is starting soon and he will crash as many nets as it takes. HE CAN DO THIS ALL DAY, PEOPLE.

I was going to ask Dave if we should do a set of "What We Did On Our Summer Vacations" essays, but there's no point. He got engaged, I've been sick a lot. At least one of us is having fun.

Anyway! On to the hockey things, in no particular order except that with which they occur to me.

Prospal bought out and signed with the Rangers: boo. I don't like it, he don't like it, Lecavalier don't like it. People who are happy with that include the owners and the fans who fail to see how every goal is better when there's a screaming crazy man on the wing. (Really, they are. Crazy Czechs for the win.) Farewell, V20, for the fifth(?) time; we shall always remember how you tried to shove it up Tortorella's butt.

Tanguay has been signed; COINCIDENTALLY Artyukhin has been shipped to Anaheim, in exchange for an angry-looking Zamboni, which in Russian is called "the thing Ovechkin drove through New York." Fans hope for a Vinny-Marty-Tanguay line they can lovingly call the 'French Connection' to replace the now-defunct MVP line. Vinny likes having Tanguay around, but he is sort of wondering who will be on the wing there.

Mike Smith is healthy again, hooray. He will be playing in the preseason game tonight vs. Atlanta, woohoo. He refuses to wear a mouthguard, useful in preventing concussions, because he will eat it -- oh. Oh dear. He also got beaned on the head by a shot from a twelve-year-old at some point over the summer. Tampa media joked about this; Canadian media took all the jokes seriously and once again raised the point that we don't know how to hockey down here.

Our new Finnish Backup Goalie is named Antero Niittymäki and there is absolutely no way I will remember which two letters in there are doubled, nevermind where the umlaut goes. He differs from Smitty in being, as mentioned, Finnish; also by having 100% less bro-fro. Odds on his running away to Siberia at the end of his contract? Feel free to chime in, that's why we have comments.

Speaking of umlauts, Mattias Öhlund took part in the 2009 FanFest charity scrimmage, which was all retooled at the 11th hour to be in honor of a Tampa police officer killed in the line of duty. Shenanigans at said Fest included a yard-sale of used gear, a scrimmage where the fans laughed almost as much as the players, and cheap beer. Öhlund said, during one of the interviews at the fest, that he was impressed by the turnout and the fans. If you are interested in all things Öhlund, there is a blog all about him.

In news of other Swedish imports, Victor Hedman made his defensive debut last night. Clocked an impressive 27 minutes of ice time, which has had the hockeyblogosphere going "wait, wait, what?" all day yesterday. Hedman says he plays better when he plays a lot, so this is of the good.

Oh yeah, something else. They actually had a training camp this year, not a summer camp. During the offseason most everyone went up to Minnesota for various sorts of conditioning. Stamkos spent weeks having ex-Bolt Gary Roberts work with him. Steve Downie got to an astonishing 7% body-fat in training camp. So they've all been busy, unlike the Melrose ~~Error~~ ~~Era~~ Experiment. One hopes they will be less prone to massive season-ending injuries like half the team got last year.

(A notable exception to this, as with many things, is Mike Smith, who spent his summer in the company of dogs, lumber, and power tools. I am told this is perhaps not the thing to do when recovering from a head injury, but since he is skating now, it apparently worked.)

Larry Hirsch on the air? Can I get a Yessir!?

2009-07-16T08:47:00.005-04:00

The Lightning's first ever playoff series carries many memories. A 2 games to 1 lead as the 8th seed. Records crowds to ever see an NHL game. The breeding ground for what is now a multisport rivalry between Tampa and Philadelphia. Even the guy in section 306 that shouts "Flyers Suck" regardless of the opponent owes a little something to that 1996 playoff matchup. But as is the case for many great sports moments, it's the call of the announcer, in this case the call of Lightning radio man Larry Hirsch, that resonates immediately with the mind.

The story begins in Game 2 in Philadelphia. After the Lighting is dominated in its first ever playoff game, Darren Puppa steals the show with his last great performance in net, keeping the team within striking distance and getting the game to overtime at 1-1. Hirsch, an energetic and emotional play-by-play man who's worked various sports for teams throughout the country, sought soothing words at the end of regulation to calm his high-strung nerves. They came from his wife, Susan, who calmly informed his nervous husband that Brian Bellows would win it for the Lightning in overtime.

And sure enough, Bellows scored in overtime. Lightning win 2-1.

So when the Lightning made a late third-period comeback against the Flyers in Game 3 to send that match to overtime, Hirsch again sought Susan's comfort. He relayed the Game 2 story of his predictive wife during Game 3. He then shared - on the air - his wife's latest look into the future. Again, no need to worry. She said it will be Alexander Selivanov scoring the winner this time. Hirsch said if it happened, he would take his future-seeing wife to Vegas.

And it wasn't long after that we heard one of the lasting play-by-play calls in Lightning history:

He scores! He scores! Selivanov! The winner! The winner! Yes sir! Yes sir! Yes sir! And I'm taking my wife to Vegas!

Why the story? Hirsch, the play-by-play radio announcer with the Lightning back in the 90s (the 93-94 through 98-99 seasons if memory serves) spent the past week on the AM radio in Tampa on ESPN 1040. Hirsch filled some substitute time for the station's regular afternoon drive-time host.

Hirsch is known for that energetic catch phrase "Yes sir! Yes sir! Yes sir!" after a Lightning goal. His calls were - I believe - the first time the team ever used its radio voice in marketing materials, as they often do now during pregame videos.

I only caught a couple of his radio broadcasts this past week, but they were both fun and reminiscent as Hirsch mixed the regular sports issues that fill most of the Tampa summer (Rays baseball) with anecdotes of Lightning broadcasts and other great announcers. In his last show, he had an emotional but interesting conversation with Marty Brennaman, a fellow play-by-play radio man and longtime voice of the Cincinnati Reds, who shared some of his memories as a broadcaster.

No word, through, if Larry ever took Susan to Vegas.

Reasons for optimisim actually exist

2009-07-13T12:58:00.003-04:00

The Lightning essentially played four separate seasons last year - The Melrose Era, The Second Training Camp Era, The Lightning Era, and The Injury Era. Compare the point totals during these four eras.

The Melrose Era - The first 16 games of the season, in which the Lightning finished with only 5 wins while Barry played with his mullet.
14 points
16 games
72 point full season projection.

The Second Training Camp Era - Games 17-28, three weeks worth of time for Tocchet to install his system, about the same length as a training camp.
6 points
12 games
41 point full season projection

The Lightning Era - Games 29-53, a real coach coaching a moderately healthy roster.
27 points
25 games
89 point full season projection

The Injury Era - Games 54-82, the point at which the team lost Mezaros, Ranger, and Smith, its top-two defensemen and starting goalie, within a week, for the rest of the year.
19 points
29 games
54 point full season projection

After the Melrose debacle and time for Tocchet to implement an actual system, and before the team became decimated with injuries that would cripple any team, the Lightning was actually, well, not bad. Not great, but ok. The 27 points in 25 games projects out to 89 points in a full 82 game season, which last year would have been good for 11th in the Eastern Conference (or tied for 9th in the West), just 4 points out of a playoff spot.

Sure, being optimistic about almost missing the playoffs is a little lame, but expectations need to be real. If next season, the Lightning are within 4 points of a playoff spot with a week to go in the season, I'll take it.

Aside from high draft picks, it can be hard to find a silver lining in such a dismal season. Excuses aside, finishing 29th in the league and being completely irrelevant for two straight seasons is bad in any light. But consider the what happened when Tocchet coached the best players available, then consider the upgrades thus far in the summer, and you can see why things could get better in a hurry.

That new guy?

2009-07-12T03:25:00.002-04:00

Looked good when I saw him.

Updated roster predictions

2009-07-10T14:39:00.005-04:00

Part prediction, part desire, here's a mix of how the Lightning's roster should and will appear come October. Names are followed by their 2009-10 salary cap number.

Forwards
Prospal 3.5 - Lecavalier 7.73 - Artyukhin 0.95
Malone 4.5 - Stamkos 3.73 - St. Louis 5.25
Veilleux 0.75 - Craig 0.79 - Hall 0.6
Konopka 0.5 - Szczechura 0.6 - Downie 0.82

In the mix
Carter Ashton, Radim Vrbata, Jeff Halpern

Defense
Ohlund 3.75 - Ranger 0.93
Meszaros 4 - Walker 1.7
Hedman 3.75 - Foster 0.6

In the Mix
Matt Smaby, Matt Lashoff

Goalie
Mike Smith - 2
Antero Niittymaki - 0.6

Totals
Salary Cap #: $47.25 million
Actual Salary: $48.6 million

What's new?
Mainly the defense. With the somewhat unexpected signings of Ohlund and Walker, the team has immensely improved it's defensive roster all through the organization. The trickle down lets the kids play in Norfolk, where they should play, giving better depth and growth potential over players rushed to the NHL. And thankfully, despite his signing, Lukas Krajicek does not fit into this roster.

Hall has bumped up to the third line, as a Hall, Craig, Veilleux threesome shows some value as a low risk, experienced group. For the time being, with Pettinger out of the mix, Arty's at the top, which only highlights that the last real need for this team is at right-wing. Down at the fourth, he'd fit nicely with the aggression and energy of a Szczechura-Downie combo. That could be a Hanson-like line, something Indi would appreciate.

His production doesn't warrant top line, but someone has to be up there. Unless the Bolts bring in another body, Carter Ashton emerges as a late first-round rookie steal, or Lawton gives Vrbata a shot to make the team, expect a lot of mix and match with the top five forwards.

Sticking with a cost-effective approach, however, it is still in the team's best interest to trade Jeff Halpern and his $2 million salary for whatever prospects it can. Expect the Lightning to try and keep its cap number under $48.8 million, the mid-point of the cap and the floor. Teams under the mid point qualify for revenue sharing. But is that too high of a real world salary for this group?

Meet Kurtis Foster

2009-07-08T16:14:00.006-04:00

Meszaros, Walker, watch out: there's a new Indestructible Guy in town. His name is Kurtis Foster.

In March 2008, Foster made the NHL collectively wince in sympathy when he broke his femur after being checked into the boards on an icing race. (The femur, by the way, is the biggest bone in the human body.) There's a good article about it here.

"Mikko [Koivu] came in Saturday and was here for four hours, and he saw my leg and he couldn't believe the things I was doing. He had to turn his face at times," Foster said. "Until you actually come in and see for yourself what it's like, you don't actually realize what I'm going through."

If that's all that had happened to him, that'd be enough -- but it isn't. A few months earlier, in November 2007, Foster caught a slapshot to the side of the face. Another few inches, and he'd have lost an eye. As it was, he couldn't use the eye for about a week because of the swelling, and on top of - or perhaps underneath - that, he'd broken a bone. Read about that here.

Either he's made out of unstoppable X-Men stuff or we should all send him good-luck charms. I'm not sure which, honestly.

Catching up on drafts and trades

2009-07-02T10:44:00.004-04:00

Before anything else: yes, Vinny is still a Bolt. See the sidebar for an accurate depiction of what we at this site feel about that piece of news. Also see this article for a take on the potential change in politics this could cause. Next season should be interesting, with a proper training camp and number four being healthy for the first time in two years. By 'interesting' I mean 'Vinny is probably going to score a lot.'

We also picked up Mattias Öhlund, which brings our total of Swedish defensemen up to two, from none at this time last week. He looks a solid guy, and it'll be good to have him around both on and off the ice. On ice, this defense (look at that, we have a defense!) is young and can use the guidance; off it, Öhlund will help Hedman get acclimated. We also picked up Matt Walker, who is known for refusing to leave a playoff game with a twisted-up fractured finger that looked like a Dali painting. He and Meszaros can go around being tougher than everybody, although I hope that they will stay healthy and not need to show off how comic-book indestructible they are.

They also sent out a pile of qualifying offers (see article here) to the RFAs, although there are two players who did not get new paperwork to fiddle with. McKenna, the feel-good story of last year, will be on his own. Smaby and Lashoff got offers, as did Ramo, so that the Lightning can keep his North American rights if Siberia doesn't work out.

Haven't heard anything about Cory Murphy, which will come as sad news to the legion of fans who like to make Chuck Norris jokes about him.

There's a list of everyone's draft picks here. If you're afraid of links, the Bolts picked up three forwards (a full lineup of right, left, and center), two defensemen, and two goalies.

In news of everywhere else in the league... Chris Pronger made some people go "what?" by moving to Philadelphia on draft day; fortunately for him, Philly does not get to minus thirty-two nine months out of the year. With Emery also on Philly's roster, I almost hope they go for the thug trifecta and sign Belfour to assist him in his comeback plan. Though, with the Lightning having to see them more than once a year - it being the same conference - I sort of hope they don't, because there's only so much glove-throwing smashy shenanigans I can put up with. Nikolai Khabibulin, who is Russian and thus (one assumes from warm Florida) not concerned about nine months of snow, has taken a spot in Edmonton. Marian Hossa signed with Chicago for twelve years, making lots of people go "what?" and assuring us that Chicago will fall to Detroit in the WC finals. Lastly, Conklin signed with St. Louis, which means that the scheduled Winter Classic for 2010 will be changed so that the Blues play.

(I never can resist a chance to make a Bryzgalov joke. It's a sickness. I'm terribly sorry.)

Overall I like the moves the team has made last week. (TSN likes it too.) Defense looks good and I'm happy with the top two lines. Rumor has it that they'll tackle a backup goalie through trades. So now we wait and see who gets trimmed from the roster.

... and that's a week's worth of blogging all at once. Got a new computer, been busy beating it into submission. Sorry about that.

Ohlund a Bolt, and that's not too bad

2009-07-01T16:59:00.005-04:00

Almost on cue, as the day turned to midnight, a crazy storm moved into to town. The Tampa skies are aflame with lightning, and coincidentally, the Lightning are aflame in free agency.

Mattias Ohlund will go about as far as an NHLer can, from Vancouver all the way to Tampa. The Lightning signed the veteran defenseman to a 7-year deal at an average of $3.75 million per season. He's a solid top-two, and will bring a steady game, 20+ minutes per night, and good experience to a very young defensive group. No doubt the native of Sweden will also provide some tutelage to fellow countryman and top draft pick Victor Hedman.

Expect to see Ohlund on the power play, which will free Paul Ranger to play more at even strength. He's not a big point producer, but does give solid offensive numbers for a defenseman. And don't worry too much about his age. The best defensemen are generally in their 30s, and he played all 82 games last season. It's a very solid pickup, and at a decent price. We'll have to wait to learn how much actual money he'll be making this year, as that will certainly factor into any other deals the Lightning make.

By the way, the average over the course of the contract is the cap hit, which is likely the reason for such a long deal. Don't expect the 32-year-old to be with the team in seven years, unless he continues to perform. If so, his deal becomes very owner-friendly at the end, as most of the actual money is probably due Ohlund up front.

Clock strikes midnight, Vinny's still a Bolt

2009-06-30T23:58:00.003-04:00

Just to get the note in there, our Vinny Trade Clock has reached all zeroes. The center's new contract has officially taken effect, and with it, Vinny's no move clause. While it's no guarantee that Vinny won't be traded, be it tomorrow, next month, or in three years, it does bring some sense of stability to the off-season.

And makes an acceptable time to renew the season tickets.

Islanders play it straight, Bolts get Hedman

2009-06-26T20:32:00.003-04:00

Despite the talk that the Islanders could shake up the top of the draft by passing on John Tavares, they took the highly touted scorer, allowing the Lightning to pick the guy it always wanted, big 6'6" defenseman Victor Hedman.

Aside from just getting a much needed blue line presence in what most consider a can't miss player, the Lightning avoid the many scenarios that may have come its way if Hedman went #1 and Tavares was available at #2.

More on Hedman and the rest of the draft, including the Lightning's remaining selections taking place tomorrow, in the coming days.

Could the Islanders decide if Vinny stays or goes?

2009-06-25T12:11:00.009-04:00

No, Vinny will not be playing in Long Island next year, not for the home team anyway. But tomorrow's draft, and specifically who the Islanders select, could give trigger-happy Lightning management justification for trading it's resident icon.

Here's the scenario.

Odds are the Islanders do as expected and take Center John Tavares with its top pick. He's a scorer, something the Islanders need short-term, and has already developed a bit of a superstar-to-be status, something the Islanders need long-term. But some out there think it's not as obvious a choice as it once was, and the NHL-ready Victor Hedman, a high upside defensemen in a league short on the position, could be the smarter pick.

So what happens if the Islanders take Hedman and Tavares becomes the pick at #2? Here are three possibilities:

1) The Lightning draft Tavares, stick him on a suddenly more potent third line, become crazy talented at center along with Vinny and Stamkos, and be on its way.

2) Another team makes a major push to trade into the #2 pick to draft Tavares. Let's use Toronto as an example, as it claims to be very interested in drafting Tavares. The Leafs could offer its own first round pick (#7 overall) additional picks either next year or later in the draft, and a top defenseman off it's roster, possibly Tomas Kaberle at a reasonable $4.2 million per year, or last year's #5 overall pick, defensman Luke Schenn.

A player like Schenn would make more sense to the Lightning. He's cheap under his rookie deal, has plenty of upside, could be seen as a decent consolation prize to missing Hedman, and projects to a top 2 defensemen after a solid rookie year in the NHL.

So in this example, the Bolts would turn the #2 pick into the #7 pick, last year's #5 pick (a defenseman), and maybe a 3rd or 4th rounder to boot. All because Tavares has such high visibilty and considerable value.

3) Here's where Vinny comes in to play. With Hedman on the island, the Lightning pick Tavares, sees two very young, extremely promising centers on its roster in Tavares and Stamkos, and trades Lecavalier.

To make that sensible from a hockey perspective, a few things need to happen. First, Tavares needs to be what he's supposed to be, and Stamkos needs to continue his progress. Second, the Lightning still needs to pull in a no doubt deal for Vinny, whose trade value has never been lower. He's coming off a second straight off-season of surgery and his worst point total in 5 years, along with a new big price tag. While other teams know he's better than last year's numbers, they won't offer a trade that way. Instead, they will low ball the supposedly cash-strapped Lightning hoping to snag him on the cheap.

But he would need to return a bonafide top two defenseman, two bonafide wingers than can play in the top two lines, a bonafide, high end prospect, and high draft picks. At a minimum.

Or the Islanders take Tavares, and none of this matters.

Does Jigsaw really want to trade Vinny?

2009-06-25T11:54:00.005-04:00

The Times are certainly painting the picture that Barrie is the man to keep the ship intact, honor the contract they signed with Vinny, and raise payroll to allow for some free agents.

But some talk around town has been quite the opposite, that it's Koules that actually wants to keep Vinny in town and Barrie that wants to build without him. The real key here is that Barrie has nearly no investment in this team. A lot of talk, but not much money. Barrie's investment was based on the sale of his real estate up in Canada to a group from Dubai. The $500 million deal fell through (that economy thing people keep talking about) and now individual units of his massive complex are going up for auction.

If Barrie really is the Vinny supporter, I like his mindset, but without the cash, he can't make the decisions.

The Times now says that Bettman decided things stay as they are, with Jigsaw as the head man but Barrie's approval required on major transactions, such as trades. If they can never agree on things, then maybe nothing will get done at all. At least that would mean Vinny stays put.

And just for the record, while our Vinny no move clause countdown clock is cool, that clock hitting zero by no means guarantees he stays. Wouldn't you waive your no move clause if your boss didn't want you around?

Dan Boyle would.

Deadlines: The Duck & Cover Edition

2009-06-23T10:36:00.006-04:00

All I ask is that this team stop being the bloody laughingstock of the league. Is this too much, people? Is it really? My crazy-tolerance is high, mind you; I watched the Lightning survive the Yakuza Years. The difference here is that the owners are bickering in English and everyone knows what the arguments are about.

Saw Ownership has hared off to New York to have a talk with Gary Bettman about who gets to call the shots. Times article here.

The talk is that Koules wants to keep Lawton as GM, wants to trade Lecavalier to get out from under his $85 million contract and wants to pare the payroll to the low $40 million range. Barrie is not as solidly behind Lawton, wants to build around Lecavalier and is in favor of signing some free agents to get the payroll closer to $50 million.

It does explain a lot about the baffling back-and-forth behavior from the front office.

For what it's worth, sign me up with Team Barrie - Koules' proposed ideas sound like a great way to soften up the team for ~~slaughter~~ that jackal Balsillie.

To make today better, we've also learned that Karri Ramo has signed with Avangard Omsk which, being in Siberia, is about as big of a change as can be gotten. It is a two year deal. Et tu, Karri? I don't know yet if the Lightning still have any claim on Ramo's North American rights. I suppose it sorts out which Finnish backup to keep around, if nothing else. Helenius, step on up; I hope you can handle crazy.

Good news about Smitty

2009-06-13T19:06:00.002-04:00

Via Cristodero with the Times, as usual.

Asked if he will be ready for training camp," Smith said, "Absolutely."

Smith said he is working out hard, both on the stationary bike and with weights and has raised his heart rate to 175, which Lightning trainer Tommy Mulligan said is "close to the max of his training capacity." Smith, whose last game was Jan. 30, has not skated (though he joked he could if his skates were sharpened), and he admitted he still has occasional "dizziness" and "fogginess" and sometimes after workouts "little black dots get in my vision." But he also said, "We have to remember that I haven't worked out and I haven't been on the ice for five months now. If you, or anyone else, haven't worked out for four or five months and got back in the gym and got their heart rate back up to 175, 180, they probably would feel the same way I am right now, even without a concussion.

"I'm pushing it pretty good right now. ... I've felt better and progressed every day I've been in the gym, so it's definitely exciting."

Read the full article here.

ps: I don't know what Dave's done to the site now. Apologies.

Little bits of nothin' important.

2009-06-04T15:11:00.008-04:00

It's summer. There's really not much hockey stuff going on here in Lightning land. A few things have made the news. By "a few" I mean "very few." Have a roundup.

Right now, most of the guys are chillin' in their various not-Tampa homes, working on the conditioning program that Tocchet outlined. There's a more intensive training to take place up in Minnesota, I believe, before training camp here gets started. They sat down with every player and made a list of requirements they are to meet by the beginning of this possibly-in-Minnesota gig. Some of them are up there now - Meszaros The Indestructible and I forget who else. Ranger, maybe?

Tocchet has warned that if any of the guys do not meet expectations, there will be hell to pay. So I guess this is the opposite of Melrose Summer Camp, with actual training and conditioning, things that are useful for hockey later on. Good. I'm sure they'll be sad when there isn't a scheduled time to sing songs around the campfire, but maybe they can work that in anyway. The boys do a killer gravity-defying version of "Dead Or Alive." (Not my video.)

Other than that it's all little news oddments. In order of absolutely nothing:

1. They're redecorating in the offices and unloading some old furniture. People are wildly amused by this. By which I mean they are immediately inferring that, good god, if the Lightning are so hard up that they're selling furniture on Craigslist, a relocation to Canada is so imminent that we ought to start drafting new jersey designs. Settle down, people; here in the sugar colonies we do this thing we call 'yard sales' where we swap used furniture for small amounts of cash, thereby reducing landfill use. This is similar, except the demand for display cabinets is much more limited than that for couches and Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream album. So they put it on the internet instead.

2. The top three prospects visited the Ice Palace yesterday, to hang out and throw stuff around and run madly through the concourses and do all the other fun-looking things that security guards tell us fans not to do. The Lightning website posted a few photos here, where you can see some interesting tidbits. One, we apparently have issues with the spelling of 'prospects,' having never come into close contact with the concept before. Two, there is not a thing in that building, apparently, which cannot be painted with a Lightning logo. And lastly, Hedman is really really really huge good lord. Here's another article where everyone says they're happy for the opportunity to pop by.

(2a. Last night - I didn't manage to save a copy of it, sadly - the NOAA outdid itself with a weather alert. It warned that the thunderstorm we were having could dump enough rain to cause Biblical street-flooding which could wash away cars. They are instituting this new "Try not to kill yourselves, ok guys?" campaign called Turn Around, Don't Drown. Welcome to the crazy, draftees. You get used to it. When the news says to stay indoors or you'll die, you're totally safe to go out for Chinese. I did. I'm still here.)

3. Sullivan's current movie-montage theme is by The Clash; the suits are looking for guys to replace him if he decides not to stay. We're assuming at this point that he won't, because we've been assuming that the whole time.

4. There are as-yet undiscovered tribes in the Amazon rainforest arguing over whether or not Vinny's going to get traded before the NMC kicks in next month. That's how not-new that bit of news is.

By the way, reader(s?), you may expect all manner of new graphical tomfoolery once I replace this dying and overheating Frankenstein computer with one where everything works correctly. Which is going to happen soon. I think Dave's content with the re-re-design, for now. Mostly. Until he gets it into his head to change it again. BoltsBay may not have the freshest news or the most inside of views, but we offer loads more bad jokes and a crazed need to keep messing with the CSS. Tell your friends.

Steroids?

2009-05-27T09:18:00.008-04:00

Interesting article from the Trib today, which may cause more news later.

Seems there was a drug bust in central Florida. The guy getting busted claims he sells to the Washington Capitals and Washington Nationals. Nobody's managed to prove this, yet.

People? Quit making my state look bad.

(More information from the Ledger here; this is a big piece of news regardless, but damn, did they have to drag hockey into it?)

Choose Your Own Draft Adventure

2009-05-25T10:23:00.008-04:00

Cristodero with the Times has an interesting overview on Victor Hedman here; well worth the read, I think. That is, if we get Hedman. Haven't filed the contracts yet.

Why am I not pre-emptively slapping a Bolts sticker on the guy? There's a pile of assumptions to be made here, with nice little if/then scenarios following each one. It kinda goes like this:

Page One. Have a crapular season; land overall number two draft pick. If so, proceed to page six.

Page Six: Will Lawton keep the pick or will he trade it?
- If he keeps it, go to page 18.
- If he trades it, go to page 47.
- If he trades it to Montreal along with Vinny, riot. A lot.

Page 18: Will the Isles keep their number-one spot and draft Tavares, thus freeing up Hedman for the number two pick?
- If they do, go to page 36.
- If they don't, go to page six and then 47.

Page 36: Do we then draft Hedman with the number two pick?
- If so, go to page 94.
- If not, go to page 47.
- If not and we get Magnus Svensson-Paajarvi, go to page 47 while wondering two things. One, why do we need more wingers? And, two, how in God's name is that all going to fit on the back of a jersey? (No, really - that's kind of the thing I want to see the most, next year. Do they use really little letters? Do they arbitrarily pick one of the two surnames?)

Page 94: Yay, we have Hedman! Now what?
- If he gets traded for spare parts in 5 years once we've trained him up nicely, pour a forty for Dan Boyle and then go to page 47.
- To find him a good linemate, go to page 28.

Page 28: Everything went our way! Clearly we have left reality and are either on some really good drugs, or have shifted over into an alternative universe where things are less crapular. We have Meszaros and Ranger and Smaby and Lashoff and Murphy. They're all healthy and this doesn't look so bad for a developing defensive core. Congratulations, Tampa, you win.

For further ridiculousness, proceed to page 55.

(Page 47: Fans go OMGWTF; claim that every previous owner including the Absentee Japanese Guys And Weren't They In The Yakuza Or Something were better for the Lightning than Saw Management. Woe, sadness. There could be tears.)

(Page 55: Somehow strongarm Detroit into giving us Jonathan Ericsson; pair him with Hedman. Then we have The Great Wall Of Sweden bringing up the rear, because good lord, those two are ginormatrons. I don't think this will ever happen, but the thought amuses me. Funnier, though, would be acquiring Hudler and Perrin and putting them with Marty to form the Five Nine Line. Stop looking at me like that. It's the offseason, I get bored.)

So -- assuming it all shakes out like that, we'll have Hedman at the blue line. I am intrigued. Hockey's Future has a page about him which is nicely informative.

Attention.

2009-05-19T19:18:00.002-04:00

To all three readers who may be scratching their heads while things change around wildly:

BoltsBay.com is having a massage. Normalcy will return as soon as we decide what is really normal anyway.

Thank you.

A season so bad it's criminal

2009-05-18T18:45:00.011-04:00

One of ~~our loyal readers~~ my friends who for some reason follows along with my various internetty escapades passed this image along to me today. Here's what he had to say about it -- for which, M, much thanks:

This is what the gubment thinks of your site. Frankly, I don't believe a word of it.

We've really made it. I'm so proud. We're blocked by the military!

Is it the referees, or the system?

2009-05-16T13:18:00.003-04:00

Thanks to William for his comment on Can I call it a conspiracy now? Great stuff and nice perspective from someone who has worked as a referee -- no doubt the most unappreciated employee in all of sports, particularly hockey.

The negative assessment I often have on the referees stems, at least for me, from the process as much as the individual. Hockey is a blazingly fast sport full of humans in the upper percentile of height and lean muscle mass. Calling the game at ice level must be an excruciating job. Penalties will be missed simply because refs can't always see though the maze of linebackers on skates caged into such a confined area.

But the NHL does its officials no help by continuing to allow an uneven referee system and a stubborn post-game review process.

The two-referee system has been a failure. In a game with specific rules, it is still dominated by judgment. "I could call a penalty, but was that enough of a hook? Enough of a trip? Enough of a hold?" In baseball, you reached the base first, or you didn't. Safe or out. In football, you crossed the line of scrimmage first, or you didn't. On or offsides. But nearly every call in hockey is, to some degree, left to the judgment and discretion of the referee.

By adding a second referee on the ice, there is no consistency not just game-to-game, but from one end of the ice or another. I always recall a Lightning-Buffalo game that I attended a few years ago with my Sabres-loving brother-in-law, Paul. In the new NHL, once a player dumps the puck in, that defenseman must either immediately check the player, hold his position on the ice, or turn and skate. You cannot impede his process to chase the dump, else you are guilty of interference. Well, on a dump-in, a Buffalo defenseman drifted about halfway back into his zone, then pinched the Lightning skater into the wall to keep him from the puck while a second defenseman retrieved it behind the goal. Textbook interference, but not called.

On the very next sequence up the ice, that second Buffalo defenseman pushed the puck ahead, a forward dumped it into the zone, a Lightning defenseman pinched him into the wall, and was called for interference. Paul and I faced each other and laughed at what must have been the best example of why the system is flawed. Two judgments on the ice at once, and two different games called within one night, every night.

To compound the issue, the NHL provides unconditional support for their officials, which does nothing more than reinforce the idea that what they do is always right. Earlier this season, Stamkos had a goal disallowed for batting it in with a high stick. The referee that made that decision on the spot was standing at least 10 feet away behind Stamkos's back. It was physically impossible from his position to even see contact point of the puck and the stick, yet he made that call.

I'd fault the reporters for not asking that question, but they almost never get access to the refs to ask. It would have been a nice point for the league office to say, "You know, we don't think he could have seen that play, so he should have let the goal stand and allow replay to make the overturn." We all make mistakes, and can understand in such a difficult profession that it will happen almost every night. But the best of us also admit when we are wrong, and the NHL will rarely do that, which only adds to the frustration that on any given night, the referee will make a mistake that will cost a team points. It may not be true, but it gives the impression that the NHL just doesn't care.

Bolts GM Brian Lawton said last week that at times last season, the officiating "sucked." I agree, but to a greater extent, it's not just the refs, but the system that sucks.

Andrej Meszaros: More Badass Than Everyone

2009-05-13T17:27:00.005-04:00

An interesting story popped up the other day on the Lightning Insider part of the team site, which is a well-hidden thing that does, however, offer RSS feeds.

It's about Mez, his face, his cage, and how the man cannot be stopped. If he were anyone other than a hockey player, I'd be suggesting we check his back for a zipper, but -- the guy plays hockey. They always deliver the thrilling heroics, even when we don't see it happen.

The story is long, filled with skull fractures and gore and icksome things, and the Insider felt it necesary to add a warning for the squeamish at the beginning of it. I'll do the same, give you a teaser quote, and send you on your way with a link.

There was just too much to repair to have him ready before the end of the game. He was even adamant as he was being worked on that the equipment staff put a full cage on his helmet so he could rejoin the game as soon as possible. If the incident would have happened at the end of the first period, instead of the second, Meszaros probably would have been back on the ice.

You can read the rest of the article here and I recommend you do; this is a classic tale of guts and gore.

The Jinxed Wall

2009-05-06T12:31:00.005-04:00

Google photographed it a while ago, so there's a player in the street-view photo, but the Jinxed Wall is viewable here, where Vinny shares space with enormous bottles of beer. Ah, the South: what we lack in sophistication we make up for with an unselfconscious lack of sophistication.

The problem with that wall began, as I understand it, with Marc Denis. (It could be said that a lot of problems began with Marc Denis, but I'll leave that for Dave.) When he was signed, the media got very excited. There were big full-color spreads in the newspaper. The officials lined up to say Denis was the cure to our goaltending woes. This was celebrated with a shiny new banner of Denis on that stretch of wall. We all know what happened next. By the time Holmqvist and Ramo had teamed up to oust Denis from his starter spot, the banner was quietly taken down.

Next in that spot was Dan Boyle, who upped the ante by providing the team with an unintentional reenactment of the French Revolution in the locker room. By the time Boyle's tendons reconnected and he was back on the ice, the banner had been replaced - and he was ~~traded~~ dumped, quite unfairly, a few months later.

The wall sat quiet until everyone got excited about Steven Stamkos. Now, the Seen Stamkos ad campaign was entertaining. The stickers were in a jovial Seussian typeface, blue and white with no pictures. It was an audience-participation sort of project, too, since fans were encouraged to have stickers mailed to them so they could be slapped on electrical converter boxes, stop signs, and anywhere else that would annoy the Tampa Police Department, who probably spent loads of valuable man-hours scraping the damn things off with box openers. (The seenstamkos.com website had a gallery where you were encouraged to send pictures of where you put your sticker, but by now it just redirects to the Lightning site.)

The problem with the giant Stamkos poster was that he had not yet dressed in Lightning kit, not even for press photographs. His head was digitally superimposed on someone else's body, coming up the ice dramatically in away kit. I don't know who provided the body, but that unknown player shoots left. Stamkos does not. When this accident was noticed, the Stamkos poster was quickly removed -- a good thing, too, because leaving it up any longer may have killed him.

Saw Ownership then proclaimed that no further players would grace the wall, because it is cursed. Ah, sports-fandom: equal parts statistics, irrational emotion, and superstition. The fans looked upon this and thought it was good, for it showed the new owners were actually paying attention.

These days the giant beers are still there, because we still revel in our Southern lack of sophistication. And in our sponsors. Instead of flanking a player, though, they flank a big image of the city skyline, rendered in dramatic monochrome: it's the background for the Big Damn Heroes photo, so you ought to be familiar with it. Rumor has it that special graphic elements were added to break the curse -- the newspaper writers say that you can find the four other SE Div logos hidden in the image. There are allegedly some other things there, too, but nobody's said what.

(Upon discussion with Dave, we have realized two more pertinent bits of advertising on That Wall. It could be argued that Vinny being there did him no favors, in light of the shoulder and wrist injuries he's had to deal with for the past two years, but I can't remember whether he was on the wall when that happened. Dave also remembers Andreychuk being there at some point, and we all know how he left.)

I don't have the hamthrax but I do have bronchitis after a wicked head cold, so I've absolutely no intentions of going downtown to play Where's Waldo with the giant poster. I'll get over there one of these days and shoot some pictures of what I find. If I spot anything interesting, I'll share it with you.

Can We Keep Vinny - Part 4 - The Goalies

2009-04-27T22:18:00.002-04:00

A few other stories have piqued my interest the last few days, so this comes a little delayed, but the off-season evaluation ends in goal, where on the ice, it all begins. And I have major concerns over the health and well-being of Mike Smith.

First, note just how good Smitty performed in the first half of the season. He allowed three goals or less in 14 of his first 17 games. In 10 of those 14 games, it was two or less. All that while facing an average of 35 shots per game in that opening stretch. Smith actually looked worth the high cost his trade required - one of the best players in team history. His .916 save percentage ranked 8th among goalies who appeared in at least half of their team's games, and he's also the only reason Barry Melrose's record with the Lightning included wins. Not too shabby.

Then came the mystery injury. Some speculated it was due to his postgame tirade, where he went Karate Kid on some benches and water bottles after allowing a ton of goals and getting pulled in what turned out to be the last game he played. Turns out it was much worse, as Smith was bothered by Post Concussion Syndrome. Almost worse, this came after he suffered the second concussion of his career. The first came with Dallas, but we're not exactly sure when it happened this past season.

Unfortunately, he acted like a hockey player and played. But not for long, and once he shut it down, it was over.

He must be healthy for the Lightning to significantly improve, but will he improve enough to be healthy? The tricky part of concussions is they become increasingly more common once it happens, so putting him back out there will be a risk, and it's almost a certainty that it will happen again. Just ask Eric Lindross about head injuries - by the end of his career, he couldn't stay in the lineup. I'd hate to see that fate come of Mike Smith, for both the Lightning's sake and his own.

That leaves Karri Ramo with an offseason to prepare as though he can compete for a starting role. The kid has talent, and remains one of the better prospects in the organization. He has a decent amount of NHL experience, although suffered last season by his numerous call-ups and send-downs that left him with limited playing time in Tampa or Norfolk.

But in an up and down season, he showed a bit of flash. He's quite athletic, and he looks a little like Evgeni Nabokov in net. He tends to over pursue the play, which gets him in trouble. But when he keeps quiet in the crease, he can be effective and sometimes spectacular. If Smith is healthy, Ramo will likely take over the backup job. However, if the Lightning find themselves out of the playoff picture early, I'd still like Ramo to get full playing time in Norfolk. If Smith isn't healthy, let's hope Ramo becomes the goalie he's capable of becoming, because we'll sure need him.

Is owning a team as bad as they say?

2009-04-25T13:48:00.004-04:00

For the past few months, various papers around this country and Canada have explored the state of the Lightning's finances. Rumors ranged from being unable to afford the remaining funds owed on the team to being unable to afford one month's player payroll. We've heard similar about other teams, both in hockey and other sports. The NHL often claims that nearly every team in the league is losing money, even clubs in "traditional" markets.

So if owning a sports franchise is such bad business, why are owners always ready to buy?

Think of owning a sports franchise like owning a home, then renting it out. You work hard, save money, maybe have a generous parent, and put a down payment of $20,000 on your new $100,000 place. You secure a loan (a mortgage) to borrow the remaining $80,000 in funds needed to complete the purchase. You make payments every month, paying interest on that loan. To offset some of that, you rent your place out to tenants, or maybe just some roommates. They pay you rent, and in exchange you spend money on some upgrades over the years - new floors, new air conditioning, a better stove, a renovated bathroom.

Bill Davidson's group purchased the Lightning for the start of the 1999-2000 season for $115 million. That granted them the team and deals on the Ice Palace and other surrounding areas (parking, five acres of land for development, and revenue from other events at the arena). So like that house, the owners put money into the team in the form of payroll and improvements. Like your roommates, the Lightning charge you for the right to walk inside and sit in a chair, collecting some degree of money for their business. You charge roommates in exchange for a place to live. The Lightning charge admission in exchange for a game of hockey.

Now it's possible that all the rent money you collect isn't quite enough to cover that mortgage payment and those improvements. Maybe it covers some, helps you out a bit, but you're still putting more money in then you are getting out. Similarly, Davidson's group claimed the Lightning lost around $5 million per season, only breaking even in playoff years and turning a small profit in the Stanley Cup run. They likely were not counting all the revenue the team collects as a product of owning the team and the building, but we'll go with that number anyway.

So with all this lost money, what's the point of owning a home? After years of renting out your house, you decide just that, and put it up for sale. And what do you discover? That $100,000 house is now worth $150,000. So you take the sale, pay off the remaining $75,000 you had on that lone, pay a few other costs, think about the money you put into the home in improvements, subtract the $20,000 in cash you put down on the house, and suddenly walk away with a clean $40-50,000.

So with all this lost money, what's the point of owning a sports team? After nine years and eight seasons, Davidson decided just that, and put it up for sale. And what did he discover? That $115 million team sells for $204 million. So you take the sale, reflect on your alleged $30-35 million is "losses" while operating the team, subtract the money you spent to buy, and suddenly walk away with a clean $40-50 million.

I'm no economist or real estate expert, but the numbers are simple enough. Franchises, like homes, increase in value over time, and the money spent is recouped at the sale. If you never sell, the value in that team is part of your overall worth. Sports owners are savvy businessmen who have made a living making smart moves with their money.

And that's why owners are always ready to buy.

Why We Hate Montreal

2009-04-23T19:26:00.005-04:00

Here's a good one out of the Times. Montreal head man Bob Gainey, whose team was just trounced by the Bruins in a 4-game sweep, blamed your Tampa Bay Lightning for his team's fast playoff exit. The Lighting, Gainey claims, leaked to the media the names of Montreal players being discussed in a possible trade for Lecavalier in order to leverage those names with other teams to discuss other trades. The poor Canadians were distracted, and therefore stunk up the joint against Boston.

Think about that one for a minute. Hockey in Tampa is no longer just the cause of jealous Canadians, over-expansion, watered-down goalies, the fall of the Roman Empire, and Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, but actually caused the 8th-seeded Canadians to lose to the best team in the Eastern Conference.

Funny, Vinny's name is out there in trade rumors every year, ever since he was a fetus. Yet the Lightning had no trouble winning the Southeast in 03 and the Cup in 04. I've never heard Vinny complain about the rumors. Name all the thin-skinned Montreal players you'd like, but it never seems to bother Vinny.

Gainey then continued by naming the Montreal players he says the Lightning leaked (Josh Gorges, Tomas Plekanec and Christopher Higgins). So he's angry that our GM allegedly leaked the names of Montreal players, and then went on to name those players again?

Brian Lawton, of course, denied the claim, and said you won't find another GM that will verify that story because it's false. I'll side with Lawton on this one. It's likely another bush move by someone associated with Montreal to get Vinny's name out there. The Lightning might be exploring trades, but I don't think this happened.

And just to make it clear, if those players were to be part of the return for Lecavalier, credit the Habs with dumping two forwards whose point production dropped by a whopping 50 points from 07-08.

Oh, and Bob, your team lost to the Bruins because your team sucks.

Can We Keep Vinny - Part 3 - The Defense

2009-04-21T19:06:00.003-04:00

You may have wondered why I neglected to mention Marty, Malone, and Stamkos when discussing the forwards. Essentially, we should get what we expect to get from that group. Tocchet will likely keep that line in tact to start the season, and it played extremely well together. Malone should stay around that 30 goal, 50 point level and St. Louis shows no signs of slowing (all things considered, last season might have been the best of his career). Stamkos averaged a point per game over the final quarter of the season and should only continue to improve.

Best of all, all three showed strong defensive awareness, which brings us to the puck stoppers.

Defense
It is so difficult to evaluate last season. The Lightning played most of the second half without its two top defensemen and its starting goalie. Normally, you might look at how the team played when it had those players. But when it had those players, it also had Barry Melrose. His negative affect on the team cannot be overstated, which makes me not so much excited, but interested in what Tocchet does with a healthy team that is his from the start.

No doubt the "additions" of Ranger and Meszaros are the two biggest to a defensive group that played with nothing but Admirals for 3 months of the season. Meszaros was somewhat underachieving when he played, but I'll grant anyone a pass under the horrid coaching they had to endure. Both should absorb 25 minutes a game and properly re-adjust the balance of ice-time.

Hedman will be the Lightning's first round pick (assuming they keep the pick), and recent drafts show that defensemen picked in the top five play right away. He'll join what will be one of the youngest defensive groups in the league, with Matt Lashoff, Matt Smaby, and Mike Lundin fighting for two positions.

Lashoff was the return on the Recchi trade and is a decent prospect, while Smaby is the most physical of the group. Lundin relies more on smarts and stick handling and is a mainstay in the system. Lashoff likely makes it, as he provides value on the power play. We didn't see much of Lundin last year, mainly in fear of losing him to re-entry waivers had the team recalled him from Norfolk. I like them both, but give a slight edge to Lundin.

The wild card is Murphy, who is an unrestricted free agent but adds a special value. He's a 5th or 6th defenseman, but his power play ability would provide an interesting luxury for the team. Combined with Lashoff and a forward (St. Louis or Stamkos) the Lightning would be using only one high-minute defenseman (Meszaros) on special teams. That saves Ranger to apply his minutes at even stregth, where's he's needed most. If the team can resign him at around $1 million per season, he's a reliable player in the correct role.

Sure, we'd like to see a splash addition to this corp, but the $4-5 million cost of a solid free-agent defenseman is likely out of range without dumping some other salary. We'll see how fast Hedman learns the game - early scouting reports say the 6'6" monster, who has solid pro experience in the Swedish Elite League, can "skate like the wind." He's the addition, as Stamkos was last year. If a Mattias Ohlund ends up here, it means one of our forwards is not.

Next comes the goalies, and then some analysis of what holes this potential roster shows.

Can We Keep Vinny - Part 2 - The Forwards

2009-04-20T21:42:00.009-04:00

*Note - If you missed the previous post below, go check it out first, then come back here for discussion of that roster.

Blunt - The Lightning sucked last year. Last in the Southeast two years in a row, bottom two in the conference in those two seasons. Not much to enjoy, and not much to love about the roster.

Dull - Melrose sucked last year. He set the team back far beyond just his time behind the bench. No system, which lead to a lost team until Tocchet put in some structure. It no doubt stunted the development of Stamkos, and may have cost him the rookie of the year award. And with no real training camp, the team suffered many injuries that probably could have been avoided.

And injuries were a legitimate killer last season. Most of the second half was played without the team's top goalie and top two defensemen, not to mention Vinny's wrist that needed surgery before the beginning of the season. Good luck winning with those injuries alone, not to mention the other 300+ man games lost by the Lightning.

So with that in mind, it is somewhat reasonable to believe that the team can at least be competitive with a full off-season with Tocchet, a healthy Vinny, Ranger, Meszaros, and Smith, a further developed Stamkos, and the defensive addition of Hedman through the draft.

But the self-imposed salary restriction of $45 million will limit free agent potential (although in reality, this budget is not far behind the expected cap, which will likely drop to the $51 million range). Most will have to come via trade, and there's not much on the roster that will return quality talent. Which brings me to some key points in my roster.

Forwards
Missing from my could-be roster is Jeff Halpern, who at $2 million next season is overpriced based on his production, yet could bring back some quality 2nd tier prospects in a trade. His face-off ability would be missed, but Vinny's around 50% nowadays, and Stamkos was above that for much of the end of the season.

I reluctantly kept Artyukhin, who wouldn't bring back in a trade the talent he already possesses. At $1 million, he's a steal if he plays to his potential, although he hasn't shown that ability yet. He should be a 15-20 goal power-forward with his skill set, but needs to find some hands. For the Lightning to succeed, some players will need to overachieve beyond last season's numbers. Arty is at the top of that list.

Next on that list might be Matt Pettinger, a player that really impressed me in the final month of the season. He rivals Marty's speed and has some natural offensive ability. A former 2nd round draft pick and a one-time 20-goal scorer, he scored 6 of his 8 goals last season in the final 18 games playing mainly a 3rd line role. Placing him with Vinny and Vinny is overly optimistic, but the Lightning likely won't add another top winger, and he's someone that can at least skate with those two. I could put Arty with Vinny, but Pettinger has shown a better offensive mind to keep up with linemates of such a high skill level.

Besides, both Vinnys will have monster years next season, especially Lecavalier, who I fully expect to be back in the 45-50 goal, 100-110 point range. Pettinger could pick up some points just for keeping his stick on the ice.

Szczechura and Downie would fill a 4th line "energy" role well, and Hall and Konopka would add some inexpensive experience and creativity, respectively. Besides, both played the end of 09 as guys who wanted to be on this team, and that counts for something. Craig still has value as a guy to park in front of the net.

Defense and goaltending comes next, then an evaluation of what holes would exist on this pretend roster. Stay tuned.

Can We Keep Vinny?

2009-04-20T21:00:00.006-04:00

Yes, and thus begins the building of next year's roster. Being as non-predictive as possible (in other words, limited cool trade speculation), here is a potential roster the Lightning could consider for opening night, based mainly on players we saw last season.

Keep in mind, Saw-management has mentioned a self-imposed budget of $43 - $45 million. That's in actual salary, not the cap hit. Odds are firing Thunderbug didn't clear up that much salary space. So, the numbers next to the names are their real life 09-10 salaries. It is organized by potential lines and defensive pairings. Digest, then read on for analysis.

Forwards - $30.73 million
Prospal 3.5 - Lecavalier 10 - Pettinger* 1.1
Malone 4.25 - Stamkos* 3.725 - St. Louis 4
Artyukhin 1 - Craig 0.8 - Konopka 0.5
Hall 0.6 - Szczechura 0.65 - Downie 0.6

Defense - $10.78 million
Ranger 1.1 - Meszaros 3.25
Hedman* 3.725 - Lashoff* 0.8
Murphy 1* - Smaby/Lundin* 0.9

Goalies - $2.9 million
Smith - 2
Ramo - 0.9*

Total Salary - $44.4 million

Some notes on all those *. Pettinger, Lsahoff, Murphy, Smaby, Lundin, and Ramo are free agents of some sort. Most are restricted, meaning the Lightning have a good chance of resigning them if the team wants them back. Pettinger is unrestricted, as is Murphy. I assumed a small raise for all free agents listed, and assumed we get them back.

Stamkos's salary takes into account the bonuses worked into contract. This assumes he earns them all. Same goes for Hedman, who the Lightning will likely draft if they keep the #2 pick in the upcoming draft. His salary is slotted in the NHL system, and would practically match that of Stamkos.

For the sake of unending posts, I'll throw this up for consumption. More to come.

Big damn heroes?

2009-04-15T09:48:00.004-04:00

One interesting thing that Saw Ownership has brought us is a bevy of new advertisements and images. Hollywood people like pictures, apparently.

They have a commercial, which I can't find online, that makes me laugh every time I see it. It is dramatic and lightning-flashy and makes use of THX Sound and very much wants to be a movie trailer or something. They made it out of a digital collage which is also an enormous poster on the side of the ~~Forum~~ Ice Palace. (I am oldschool and can call it whatever I damn well please.)

Aside from there being twelve light sources on six people -- which is the sort of thing that got me yelled at back in art school -- this is funny. See?

Vinny: Heroic.
Marty: Dangerous.
(Prospal: Pouting because he didn't get to be in the big hero picture.)
Smitty: Mysterious.
Stamkos: Rookie.
Meszaros: Chillin'.

But there, lurking in the back, ruining the effect entirely....

Malone: WHAT IS UUUUUUUUP MY BITCHES?

... I don't know, I really don't.

In other news, the lottery was completely not surprising. The Bolts got the number two draft pick, which will probably be Hedman, who is Swedish and enormous. Also, the fishwraps have revived the Vinny trade talk, which I am ignoring as best I can.

Gotta love Feds, just not yesterday

2009-04-08T10:19:00.004-04:00

Remember back when Fedetenko was scoring both goals in game 7 of the finals against Calgary, two of the 12 goals he scored that postseason? Good times. But last night, he gave the Pens a win when the refs let him get away with one.

So, long after Pittsburgh led 4-0 in the third in what looked like a runaway, but shortly after the Bolts fought its way back to 4-3 thanks to some tough work by guys looking for a training camp invite for next season, Fedetenko had a clear breakaway that Ramo stopped with his pad. Rather than turn for the rebound or skate away from the crease, Fedetenko ran into Ramo, dragging his skate into Kari's pad and spinning him out of position. A trailing Sykora slid the rebound into an open net, and Pittsburgh netted what turned out to be the game winner.

Sad really. I'll admit, live at the game I didn't see it, although Mishkin picked up on it fast from what I heard in the post-game show. I was also about 400 feet diagonal away from the play, while the refs were on the ice ready to point at the net. True, going 0-7 on the powerplay and blowing two 5-on-3 chances was the big problem, but it is what it is, and we found ourselves on the short end of another goal call.

This reminds me of a rant I need to make real soon about how the referee system should change. I'll get to that soon. Meanwhile, major props to Pettinger and Szczechura, who I think have earned the right to come into next season as regulars. 4th liners, but regulars none-the-less. More on that coming soon too.

meet Zenon Hanson

2009-04-07T13:18:00.003-04:00

I mean Konopka. Zenon Konopka.

Interesting article about him in the Times here.

When it comes to pregame warmups, the center red line is sacred, Zenon Konopka said.

Stay on your side, and everything is cool. Cross it, and there could be trouble.

"I just don't like guys skating on our side of the ice," he said Monday. "If someone skates on our side, in our building especially, I take offense, and I let them know and make sure they skate on their side of the ice."

I know I've seen this before.....

Am I the only person whose mind instantly went there?

Identify the Core

2009-04-05T23:26:00.003-04:00

I'm with Indi, and happily anticipate the end of this season. Melrose the Mullet set this team back so far this season, beginning with what appears to be an off-season of no workout program and a training camp that was more like a camp in the woods. I'm certainly anxious to see what this team will look like in 09/10, and while playoff talk is premature, there is certainly a solid core of players to build around, and most of it is still quite young.

Since this is what fanboys do, here's a core of guys to consider. Tomorrow I'll explain why I've included who I included, and why I didn't include some you might have thought I would. And I'll even create some fanboy lines, which will help us fill in the missing pieces and identify what we need.

The Core
Offense
Lecavalier
St. Louis
Stamkos
Malone
Prospal
Pettinger
Halpern
Hall

Defense
Ranger
Meszaros
Murphy
Smaby
Lashoff

Goal
TBD

Repairing the Captain

2009-04-05T09:44:00.005-04:00

As reported all over everywhere, Vinny has been shut down for the season to have his right wrist repaired. This was done Friday by a specialist in Philadelphia and all sources say the surgery went perfectly.

He was supposed to have this done last summer, but being Vinny, he wanted to play through to the end of the season. In the second-to-last game, Matt Cooke (who we here at the blog would like to see hit by a truck, or perhaps Artyukhin, repeatedly) clobbered Vinny and separated his right shoulder, which required a summer's worth of rehab and ate up most of his training-camp time.

Understandably, he didn't want to have to rehab the shoulder and the wrist at the same time, so the wrist had to wait until now.

Vinny has a nice long summer to recuperate and regain his strength, and when he's back in October we'll see the dazzling levels of sheer awesome we've come to expect from him.

I'm ready for this season to be done. The team's set to get another good draft pick, and then next year everyone can show us what they're capable of when they're healthy and properly conditioned. Tocchet's got a big plan for that. I look forward to seeing the results.

OV becomes TO

2009-03-27T09:10:00.002-04:00

I know it's been awhile, but I still have to get my word in on Alex Ovechkin's 50th goal extravaganza. Others have ranted, so I may not say anything different here, but I will say I haven't read any of those rants. How's that for a notary of original thought?

In short, someone should have taken Ovechkin's head off. It was second-class. You don't see that in Pee-Wee hockey, let alone the NHL. He pretends he didn't do anything all that bad, but I don't buy the innocent, goofy, "I'm just this Russian guy who doesn't speak English very well and comes off as a fun-loving great-for-the-NHL I-don't-see-what-I-did-wrong" act. Because that's what it is. He is an intelligent, insanely skilled superstar who knows better than to turn the game into an endzone party.

In a way, the league allowed him to reach this point with his little dress-up show at the All-Star Game. But exhibition is far different than regular season, in an opponent's building no less. Which made it all the more shameful that someone didn't run over and send him through the glass. He's owed one for ending Heward's season, anyway. Yes, the league would have suspended any Lightning player that breathed on Ovechkin, but so goes it.

I don't remember who was in the lineup, but some fringe players like Koci or Artyukhin could have got in with Tocchet real nice by showing some pride and making that a "3-hour period" as the coach would have liked.

Ovechkin works better as the hero, not the villian. Leave that for Crosby, someone we can all agree to hate.

On Smitty, Tocchet, and Next Year

2009-03-24T16:28:00.001-04:00

It's the end of an astonishingly bad season, so there really isn't much to say. The news sources have been pretty slow lately, and the team I think is ready for 08/09 to be behind them so they can start working on 09/10. There are two pieces of interesting that have come up in the past few days; one I've discussed here already and the other I haven't.

The first is Smitty, who shows a level of devotion to his work that I have until now only heard of in Jack London books about sled dogs who would rather die in the traces than rest and recover. This is not a bad thing, if the ~~sled dog~~ goalie in question is healthy and ready to go. But Smitty isn't. He can do twenty to twenty-five minutes of work on a stationary bike before his headaches come back, and although he says the nausea and vertigo are gone, he's still a bit foggy.

Tocchet has said that if Smitty were to come back he'd only do so after 10 days of training, considering the amount of time off he's had. There's less than 20 days left in the season, though, so I don't know if we'll be seeing Smitty suited up again this year.

There comes a point, when people have things wrong with their brains, that you have to say: there is something wrong with your brain and you are going to chill out until it is okay again. I think they haven't told Smitty this because they don't want to give him an aneurysm on top of a concussion. If that's what they have to do to keep him sane, all right. I am starting to believe the things I hear about goalies having.... special psychology.

More on that here, with 100% less references to Jack London.

Point two: Lawton (who reminds me of this guy - it's the ManTan and the coif) has said he'd like to see Tocchet back next year, with the "interim" tag removed from his title. Article about that here.

It's not hard to say that Tocchet is a better coach than Melrose. It's probably not a stretch to say that the guy who keeps the water bottles refilled knows more about this team than Melrose.

I'm not sure whether the dismal record reflects on Tocchet's Mad Coaching Skillz, or is a signifier of the lack thereof. There are a million factors at play here which are news to nobody: starting the season overseas (why?), the huge personnel changes, the new owners, the Injury Plague, etc etc, all the way down to the Cursed Wall and the Dead Indian. (I'll tell you about that one sometime. Nobody takes the dead guy into account here except me.)

One big point in Tocchet's favor is how Stamkos has turned into a one-man army of awesome ever since they put him on that new training program. I've loved seeing him develop. I'd like to see what Tocchet would do with a training camp.

On the other hand, Lawton being in favor sort of makes me suspicious, because it's Lawton.

Dave? What say you?

Whoops, eh?

2009-03-18T07:08:00.003-04:00

I could tell walking up to the arena from my normal parking spot off Whiting that this was going to be quite the Toronto crowd. Blue Ontario license plates filled many a minivan throughout the lots as fans of the the grammatically-challenged "Leafs" filled much of the arena. Worse, the Lightning blew a 3-0 lead to settle for one point in a shootout loss.

At least this was a truly Canadian contingent in the seats and not a bunch of Tampa-based hosers who still can't accept hockey in the town they live. These were tourists, so we'll happily accept their snowbird money in the area.

That said, the Lightning couldn't hold off Toronto, particularly after Cory Murphy left the game with an apparent foot injury. Not to put too much spin on a bad team, but the fact that the Lightning manage to be in most games this season, even the losses, is quite amazing considering the complete lack of ability on the blue line. Many a roll player is stuck with top four defensive minutes, especially with Ranger and Meszaros out (Eminger has lost about 7 minutes of ice time per game since going to the Panthers - see, our guys are out of their element).

And while I rarely have a bad word about Vinny, it was one of the worst games I've seen him play in the last 5 years. He lost his man on the third Toronto goal, had a couple of bad turnovers in his own end, and took an irresponsible retaliation penalty at the end of the second, which was quite a turning point of the game. Still scored a goal and kept the game alive in the shootout, which shows you that even at his worst he's pretty good.

Some background on Downie

2009-03-13T19:22:00.003-04:00

I like Downie. Rather, I liked Lightning Downie - I hadn't really looked into pre-Lightning Downie until he signed in Tampa. What I found was a bit concerning, given the guy's prior adventures, but he fit in well with the Bolts. I thought he'd worked the crazy out of his system and decided to take Tampa seriously as a place to play in the NHL.

Then he went and slashed a ref. I have no idea what that's about. I've never seen anything like it either. One could optimistically say that, perhaps, he was winding up for a big shot. Except you don't do that in faceoffs, never never. It's baffling, more than anything else: he knew he'd be called back up after Trade Day, since the team wanted to showcase the guys who'd be moving. It made more sense to have him playing in the minors, during that time, than to be a healthy scratch here. One of the newspaper blogs - forgive me for not having a link handy, I can't remember which one - had a quote from Tocchet about how that was the plan.

I found an article (here) about Downie, his family, and his life in general. It has nothing to do with the ref slash, but it's an interesting read. It also involves snot and Dachshunds, though not at once, and you can't go wrong there.

Downie's Slash on the Ref

2009-03-11T23:24:00.004-04:00

One more for the night. Here's what Steve Downie did up in Norfolk to earn a 20-game suspension. He's in the dark uniform taking the face-off.

Hard to tell just how vicious it was, but I've never in my life seen that motion off a center-ice face-off at. Perhaps you could lobby a Vinny-like shot attempt off an offensive zone draw, but he's in a no-win here. Maybe he didn't even mean to hit the ref, but he meant to do something. I love his energy and willingness to defend his teammates, but he messed up here. He has a violent history, and I have doubts about his NHL future after yet another suspension.

More on Lashoff

2009-03-11T23:09:00.002-04:00

Yes, I love HockeysFuture.com. And here's a little of what they say about Matt Lashoff, the Lightning's new defensive prospect they picked up for Recchi at the deadline:

Lashoff has the blend of skating, size and no apparent weaknesses. Has some offensive upside. He’s a confident and smooth skating playmaker, who is equally adept at creating scoring opportunities as he is competent in his own end of the ice. Sees the ice well; Solid on both the powerplay and penalty kill; consistent performer; not overly physical, but he doesn’t avoid physical play, either; sound positional game.

Plus....

Lashoff has the potential to be a top four NHL defender with some decent offensive upside. He will not likely develop into an offensive defenseman at the next level, but he will chip in his share of points while being a well rounded rear guard.

Pretty good words. They score him a 7.5, which puts him between a 2nd and 3rd defenseman at the NHL level. With the Lightning, he'll certainly get a shot down the road.

Back From the Islands, Catching Up

2009-03-11T22:22:00.004-04:00

So I went cruising in the Caribbean for the past week. I was a groomsman in a Cayman Islands wedding, wiped out on some strange cruise ship surfing machine, and landed a slightly sore booty riding my pretty Mexican horse Isadora - she was quite the spitfire.

So, being out of the country during trade-deadline week is a toughie. The ship's ESPN feed is mostly soccer (quite good soccer, I must say) but not much on the lowly Tampa Bay Lightning. So to give my couple of bits:

The Recchi deal is classic deadline stuff. The Bolts get a young asset for an aging soon-to-be unrestricted free agent. Matt Lashoff, from all accounts, is a solid prospect and a sign that the Bruins are going all out for the Cup, dismissing a promising former first-rounder. Hockey's Future grades Lashoff a 7.5. For comparison, the site ranks Stamkos an 8.0. Certainly the best move the Bolts made.

The Toronto deal is certainly a strange one. As Indi pointed out, this was a total salary dump. Toronto - which did its best to accumulate picks - essentially wanted that 4th rounder so much it was willing to pay the salaries of a bunch of injured Bolts. They did sneak out Andy Rogers, a long-time Lightning prospect, but he's never showed much.

The Panther deal is another salary dump. Either the Lightning decided Eminger is not worth the money he'll earn himself in arbitration this off season, or the team just didn't want to pay it. I hope it's the former, in which case it's not an awful deal. Personally, Eminger is a 5th defensman playing #1 minutes. He'll earn money based on the time-on-ice, but that is totally a result of injuries to Ranger and Meszaros and an overall weak blue line.

The team has now traded the player it traded for the player it traded for Dan Boyle.

Oh Hell, It's Trade Day

2009-03-04T17:33:00.015-05:00

Here's how it went.

- Olie Kolzig, Jamie Heward, Andy Rogers (whozat?), and a fourth-round pick went to Toronto for Richard Petiot, who does defense. Nobody understands this one. Theory is it's a salary-dump move, and that Toronto did the Bolts a favor here. There are many things I could say about this, and I will sum them up succinctly: "Yeahbuhwhat?"

(update: Rumor says this is a salary dump to get into the revenue sharing. Although the finances are fine, everybody, just fine, nothing to see here, move along.)

I guess this means Ramo is going to back Smitty up next year. He hung in there and now is granted the chance to be pelted with an absurd amount of NHL pucks on a more regular basis. The newspaper bloggers say he likes that, because he gets bored otherwise. Which is good, considering.

- Steve Eminger went to the Panthers for Noah Welch (defense) and a third-round pick. I am not sure which draft this applies to, as TSN doesn't say. I am not sure whose bright idea it was to get rid of the best unhurt defenseman we have left. I have an idea, though.

(Lawton, in the office: "Wait. I meant Pettinger. Can I have a do-over?")

(Update there: radio interview with Lawton reveals that there was a bit of disagreement with Eminger over salary for next year so it was felt better to move him now than to lose him over the summer. Is Eminger worth arbitration? Guess that depends on Welch.)

- Mike Recchi and a 2010 second-round pick went to the Bruins for Matt Lashoff (defense) and Martins Karsums (um... Lithuanian!). Lashoff apparently is decent-but-developing, which means Saw Ownership will likely trade him over the summer for some used puck bags and a Caesar salad.

Malik and Koci, unfortunately, have not been traded to Away, which is who they play best for.

To sum up: *facedesk*

There's a bright spot, right? There has to be. I'm looking for one. We still have Prospal and Halpern, that's good. (We have Halpern until this summer, at least.) We still have Roberts too, and he's worked well with Stamkos. And we still have Stamkos! We have goaltending depth for the first time since ever. Rumor has it some people were sniffing around Marty, who was not interested. Further rumor says it was Tortorella, who's on a mission from Gad to put the band back together. Oh, and Montreal still doesn't have Vinny.

Anyone wanting Vinny and/or Marty has to realize one important thing about Tampa fans: we'd throw a riot if they did it. Saw Ownership only likes horror when they're inflicting it on others.

A record night in Calgary

2009-03-02T11:42:00.004-05:00

8 to 6 score.

Vinny gets his 300th career goal.

Stamkos tops Vinny's rookie points output. (What say ye, Melrose?)

Recchi gets a career-high five points.

And McKenna debuts as Darth Goalie with a kickin' black helmet.

They have to do this when they're on the road, don't they?

Big news lately is that Steve Downie, currently with the Admirals, slashed a ref. He has been put on I believe a 20 game suspension, pending probably the sacrifice of his firstborn child. I'm holding judgement on this until I see video, as all accounts of the incident vary wildly. Though - he's enough of a hothead Philly didn't want him. That's sort of damning. He seemed to behave well enough when he was up with the Lightning. Maybe the Lightning coaches knew how to keep him leashed.

The latest on Smitty's poor brain is that he and his brain flew out to see a Vancouver chiropractor (what that has to do with a brain injury I don't know) and then flew back. They'll make a decision on shutting him down after Oh Hell It's Trade Day. I'm still in favor. This season's done. I'd rather see him healthy in October.

Related: Oh hell. It's trade day. In 48 hours. I cannot decide, in light of the new ownership, whether I should check the news with Xanax close to hand, or... hmm. I can't think of another option. Xanax it is! How many more forwards can we cram on a roster, cowboys? Still, one wonders: will we get defense? Will Recchi still be here? Halpern? Roberts? Will we manage to swap Malik for a spare goalpost? Will I never have to hear about Koci ever again, ever, please?

By the way -- Dave's out of town for the week so y'all are stuck with me. You poor poor things.

I almost feel bad for Malik

2009-02-24T21:44:00.002-05:00

Well, as bad as you can feel for a guy working in a business that pays a minimum of a $400,000 or so. But he has fallen dramatically from just a few seasons ago.

With the Lightning, Marek Malik comes off like Yao Ming on skates. He's tall, lanky, not very physical, and extremely slow. That's alright for an NBA center, but in "today's NHL" where skilled speedsters like Brian Campbell and Dan Boyle are hockey's best, his "attributes" are just horrible for a defenseman.

This is a guy that shared the plus/minus title with Marty St. Louis in 03-04 while playing with the Canucks. A guy that's a plus 133 for his career. A guy that proves how inexact that statistic really is. On a team that, without Ranger and Meszaros, dresses only average and poor defensemen, he might be the worst.

Just watch the first period of tonight's game against the Oilers for proof. The goal by Eric Cole so perfectly highlighted Malik's un-usefulness, but that was just the beginning of an awful period. I just hope it doesn't kill his trade value, which for whatever reason, seems to exist.

A Misuse of Flags

2009-02-20T15:25:00.003-05:00

Or: Why Carolina's Team is Inadvertently Funny To Floridians.

The Lightning are off on a quick little one-game road trip, to visit the Carolina Hurricanes tonight. The Canes are doing better than the Bolts this year. Nearly everybody is, though, so that's not anything new to write about. (Long Island fans, I sympathize with you. I really do. Let's have drinks. Lots and lots of very strong drinks.)

I shall instead tell you about a mildly interesting oddity I think most of the hockey-watching people of North America, who probably live in Places With Snow, would not know about.

Carolina's jerseys have a series of marks around the bottom which often makes people go, "What is that for? Didn't Phoenix try that design already?" It is used correctly as a flag on the shoulder of the regular jersey. Even better, it's the main logo of their third jersey.

That little red square with a black square inside is a hurricane flag - the exact kind hung out at marinas and the like to warn people that hurricane conditions are coming up. On the news, when there are hurricane warnings, you see these square hurricane flags tweaked into dramatic little logos.

This seems a clever connection, when you think about it. They're hurricanes, so they have hurricane warnings all over their jerseys. And they're a hockey team, so the flagpoles are hockey sticks. I would love this logo theme, if it was accurate. But it isn't.

Have a look here. The correct flag sign for a hurricane is two flags, one above the other. Floridians won't throw the furniture into the pool until it's at least a category two. Anything less than that, you don't even get out of bed.

Therefore - if you go by the NOAA standards, and down here we pay more attention to the NOAA than organized religion, at least between June and December - tonight the Bolts are facing off against the Carolina Tropical Storms.

They shoulda stuck with the whale.

What Should this Defense Look Like?

2009-02-20T08:42:00.002-05:00

With the playoffs now certainly out of reach and some team needs becoming more and more glaring, it becomes easier to understand where this team needs to build as both the trade deadline and the off-season approach. Obviously, the start needs to be on defense, where the Lightning are severely lacking even when healthy.

Take a look at what are essentially the Lightning's main defensemen:

Andrej Meszaros
Paul Ranger
Steve Eminger
Marik Malik
Lukas Krajicek
Cory Murphy
Matt Smaby

Injuries have played a major part in forcing some players into spots they shouldn't play, but go back just a week ago to a 3-1 loss to the Islanders, where a relatively healthy defense featured all the above, minus Malik, but with ice-time numbers that explain the personnel this defense simply lacks.

Think of defensemen ice-time as slices of a 120-cake. You have a 60-minute game, two defensemen out at a time. 60 x 2 = 120 (slight variances for powerplays, of course, where forwards like Recci and Stamkos often fill a point position. In this game, the defensemen played 114 minutes). Ranger led all skaters with nearly 24 minutes. Meszaros was a shade under 21 minutes, both fine and expected for the teams best (and only consistently solid) defensemen. Young Smaby clocked in at 10:38, also just fine from a still developing player filling in as your 6th defensemen.

Now concentrate for a moment on the absurd playing time for the next three. Murphy's time on ice equaled Meszaros, helped by 6 powerplays. Eminger played more than 19 minutes, Kraijcek more than 18. That's 60 minutes of cake that was covered by three guys that are simply not 20-minute-a-game defensemen. Add in Smaby's time, and that's 60% of the game that had one of those four on the ice. 60% of the time where we don't have a solid outlet passer in our own end, or a strong skater to take it up the ice, or a patient positional specialist to make smart plays to clear trouble before it starts.

You think Vinny's and Marty's numbers are down a bit from the last two seasons? It starts right there, on defense, in our own zone. Watch how many of their shifts are spent entirely around our own net that started with the puck on our defensemen's sticks that they couldn't convert to offense. Our D spends so much energy and time scrambling in our own zone on plays that a better defense would turn into simple clears or outlets towards transitional rushes that the forwards can't spend there time where they are needed.

Now add in a solid puck moving defensemen that we don't have. Someone a bit better than Ranger or Meszaros, who can handle 25 minutes of non-terror-inducing play. Suddenly, only 40% of that game is manned by the likes of Kraijcek, Eminger, and Murphy. Add in another, and you have a true top four that covers as much as 80% of the game. See, guys like Eminger and Murphy have value as powerplay specialists and can handle 10-minute games, but they are just over-extended on this team. They go up against players that are simply better. If they were only playing 10 minutes a game, they could be hidden against the opponent's 3rd and 4th lines, more to provide rest for the better players without being exposed.

This team is around .500 since Christmas, which is not as bad as it seems from the Melrose-infected record and his weak training camp that has likely contributed to all these injuries. A better defense would help the entire squad. You don't need to replace four guys to fix four guys, you just need two so that the others can go back to doing what will make them effective. Two good defensemen, and this team is actually a playoff contender.

Goalie Favoritism?

2009-02-18T11:34:00.004-05:00

Just a note, Smitty has a long way to go before he can be considered our best ever. We certainly do not have a rich goaltending history, but Smitty will be a somewhat distant third behind Khabi and Darren Puppa - who basically ended his career to get the Lightning in the playoff in 96.

The lockout killed the Lightning, probably more than any other team. Coming off a cup win with an entirely intact team (save Cory Stillman, but with Prospal back to take his place). The Lightning picked up its 1-year, $6 million option it had with Khabi, but that was wiped out with the rolling contacts of the lockout. Post lockout, when his value was never going to be higher despite his best years likely behind him, he made the choice to financially secure the next three generations of little Bulin Walls.

Sucked for us - replace Graham with Khabi on the 05-06 or the 06-07 teams, and we may still have had one more cup run - but understandable.

I wish we knew how to quit you, Nik.

2009-02-16T19:12:00.004-05:00

The big news about the upcoming Chicago game is: Khabibulin isn't playing. Which wouldn't be big news, except for his helping us win the Cup and the subsequent taking off like a bat outta hell and leaving us with confused faces and tidbits from mangled translations of Russian interviews about how much of a jerk Tortorella was to goalies and you couldn't pay him enough to stay... Wait. Where was I?

The point is, he's never played here since the night of game seven. Yeah, he bailed. After winning the Stanley Cup. For more money. To Chicago, which at the time was not the non-joke it is now. The only other time the Hawks have played here since Khabi was a Bolt was in 2005, and he elected not to play because it would be distracting.

People are still upset about this. Me too, kinda. He was - pre-Smitty - the best goalie we've ever had, not counting The Back That Loathed Darren Puppa. (I reckon he and his back were two different creatures, as one wanted to play and the other wanted to die.) We'd had a string of crap goalies before and after Nik, and he stepped in to show us that - guess what! - we can have good goaltending too! Not only that, but we get it in a grouchy haystack-haired package with entertaining eye-twitches and the most elaborate OCD Goalie stick-tapping routine since ever. We won a Cup, and then there was a lockout, and then he signed in Chicago, and ever since then the Tampa fans have been saying, Nik, baby, come back, we didn't do nothin' wrong, why you gotta be so cruel?

Smitty, this morning, reading the newspaper on his exercise bike: "WHAT THE HELL AM I, PEOPLE, CHOPPED LIVER?" It's not about you, I swear. We just have... unresolved issues with the ex.

And before you, Dave, say anything about my goaltender favoritism, I have three things to say to you.
1. Brad Richards.
2. Dan Boyle.
3. Freddy Mo.

Why Smitty's Noggin Needs A Break

2009-02-12T18:05:00.003-05:00

Everyone's seen the video, but most people don't know the results. Mike Smith took a shot to the helmet, back when he played for Dallas. The hit was so hard that it dented the metal grill in the front of the helmet, and he had to go get a spare. He played the rest of that game, and only afterwards wound up on injured reserve with a concussion. He spent two weeks nursing that one. Keep that in mind.

With the gag order about Smitty's injury, the local news have been trying to put all the pieces together and figure out what happened. We haven't been told when Smitty's brain got scrambled. As I understand it, Smitty either didn't realize or didn't admit what had happened, and finally spoke up after that Philadelphia game. Hence the confusion: nobody knew precisely what was wrong, so they didn't have anything concrete to say, and then the MRI came back to confirm that it was a concussion. Tocchet has since told reporters that he had no idea what was going on until Smitty told him. Smitty being completely insanely addicted to playing, I am not surprised.

This is pretty serious. One concussion is bad. Two are worse. We still don't understand most of what makes the human brain work when it's healthy. When it's hurt it's even more confusing. It's like cavemen trying to figure out a car, our understanding of brain injuries.

I am reminded of that time last year when Vinny's wrist (which has gone without an operation all year - he's a trooper) was acting up. Some people wanted to see him pulled for the last four or five games of the year. He wasn't, and then that jerk Cooke separated his shoulder.

This is the same thing, but significantly more serious, because head wounds always are. You can't put timeframes or percentages of recovery on a concussion: it'll go in its own time, and it'll waver from good to kinda crappy for however long it wants.

So - my thinking is: the Bolts are out of the playoffs. It's time for damage control. Put Smitty on LTIR for the rest of the season. McKenna's put in a pretty solid showing thus far, so give him more experience. This way, Smitty has to cool off and let his head heal. (I get the idea he would come back and goalie himself to death, if given half a chance.) The best part of this is that, next year, Smitty will come back healthy and crazy to go. We'll get an epic battle of Mike vs. Mike for the starter spot, and "we have too many good goalies" is a delightful problem to have.

While we're at it: if Ranger and Mezsaros want to sit out for the rest of the year, I'm cool with that. They're walking (skating?) wounded too. I'd rather see these guys healthy in October than hurt worse in April. The Injury Plague has sat heavily upon this team, and I think some enforced recovery could do them some good.

Stamkos Robbed Again

2009-02-11T09:49:00.003-05:00

I didn't see the Roberts disallowed goal, but I saw the Stamkos penalty shot that was 100 percent good. The Times quotes Atlanta goalie Kari Lehtonen as saying he didn't think it was in, although I did hear a quote from the him where he admitted he was probably a little lucky and that call could have gone the other way.

From my TV replay, I think you can see at least part of the puck inside the net, behind the post, hanging out of his glove. Not the full puck, but enough to confirm with a second angle that the puck did in fact obey Newton's laws of motion and traveled into Lehtonen's glove. That glove was completely in the net.

If A=B, and B=C....

By the way, here's the kid's breakdown in what I consider his season's three stages. In each set, the first group is his actual statistics and the second is how those statistics project over a full 82-game season. Notice the upward trend in his production:

In 16 games with Melrose:
2 goals, 2 assists, 4 points
10 goals, 10 assists, 20 points - 82 game projection

In 35 games with Tocchet:
4 goals, 13 assists, 17 points
9 goals, 31 assists, 40 points - 82 game projection

In 11 games since his "resting" plan:
2 goals, 5 assists, 7 points
15 goals, 37 assists, 52 points - 82 game projection

And that doesn't count the 2 he has scored that Toronto wrongly took away.

Just how rough has the D had it?

2009-02-10T15:19:00.010-05:00

Update: Just realized the list below does not include David Koci. He plays the wing, but has dressed as a defenseman multiple times.

In the ever-changing realm of Lightning defensement, Malik is back from injury, while Paul Ranger is back out with injury. Meszaros is still out (boy does that guy look like Frankenstein right now), and Heward is still missing from his own concussion on that Ovechkin hit. Smaby should play, but he's also banged up.

Newly aquired Josef Melichar (from the Jussi Jokinen trade) is up with the team, and will likely become the 17 defensemen to play a game this season.

Yeah, 17. So, here's the obligatory list of the other 16 that have played a game this year (and one who hasn't). Those expected in uniform tonight are bolded:

Andrej Meszaros - 52 games
Lukas Krajicek - 47
Paul Ranger - 42
Steve Eminger - 39
Marek Malik - 35
Mike Lundin - 25
Matt Smaby - 15
Jamie Heward - 13
Matt Carle - 12
Cory Murphy - 8
Vladmir Mihalik - 7
Janne Niskala - 6
Kevin Quick - 4
Ty Wishart - 2
Andrew Hutchinson - 2
Shane O'Brien - 1
Dan Boyle - 0

Smitty's Spinning Head

2009-02-10T15:05:00.002-05:00

So according to the team, our starting goalie has post-concussion syndrome. So that's why he's been out recently (says the team - no reason to lie about that, so I'll go with it).

Of course, this should lead to the question of "When did the concussion occur?" By definition, "post" concussion implies that there was in fact a concussion at some point. I'd imagine this is something that would have happened at practice or in a workout. When you get a concussion, you know it. Or rather, you don't know anything, and everyone else knows it. I know hockey players are tough, but you can't always fight biology.

Seems the local media has at least had some opportunity to ask this question, but they either haven't or haven't gotten a good answer. Either way, I haven't seen at least a mention of it in the Times, even if that mention is "the team doesn't know." Not knowing is at least knowing something, unless the whole organization has a concussion, too.

Some might say that sounds about right.

a state of madness

2009-02-07T12:18:00.004-05:00

As Dave mentioned, Vinny has to take a police boat to get to the game tonight, because the city is holding a Mardi Gras inspired festival in honor of a pirate who never actually existed.

This, perfectly, sums up what it's like living here.

Florida is a strange place. Tampa, being one of the bigger and older cities, has a long and storied tradition of weird in a state jammed full of crazy. If you're familiar with the things Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry and Steve Otto write about, you know where I'm going with this. Because they're all right.

Our urban legends are weird. Nobody knows if Teddy Roosevelt dug secret escape tunnels under the University of Tampa, or whether it was the University of Florida that genetically engineered lovebugs; everyone likes to swear those things are true, but nobody knows for sure. (Except: the UF fans blame the lovebugs on FSU. The FSU fans blame it on UF. I don't think anyone cares enough about UCF to blame it on them.)

Our true stories are better. There really are troops of monkeys who escaped into the wild during Hurricane Andrew. We do occasionally hear about escaped pet snakes eating gators and getting split from inside. The best-known strip club in a city filled with them has a UFO perched on top. Our "public art" program has provided us with things that look like two-story-tall tangled Slinkies and exploding chickens. During heavy rains, walking catfish from southeastern Asia will come out of the sewers and flop their way through neighborhoods. It's not uncommon to drive to Disney through a hellish blaze of wildfires, with the Disney-painted highway signs all soot-stained and spooky, during the dry parts of summer.

The first time we hosted the Super Bowl, the city spent a metric shedload of money "beautifying" itself. This mostly meant planting palm trees along the interstates. These trees could not stand up by themselves, so they were propped up with tripods made of planks. They died, shortly after, in a cold snap. Business as usual. We laugh, we move on.

We take it for granted, the weird. When a two-ton shrimp truck overturns, we laugh and feel sorry for the cops and assume all the seagulls within sniffing distance are helping with the cleanup. That's just how things are here.

It's been ten years since we drafted Vinny. I'd guess at this point he's used to it. That's the unspoken perk of being in Tampa: there's no snow, it's very pretty, and you also get a ringside seat when the crazy is going down.

So, in a few hours, Vinny will take a ride on a police boat through a bay full of drunk boaters pretending to be pirates, in honor of a pirate that never existed. I hope he is given a celebratory eye patch and a neck full of beads.

They'd best hurry, though. Tide starts going out at 5:30. Captains shouldn't be run aground on game day.

The Captain gets to be Captain?

2009-02-06T17:27:00.002-05:00

Vinny Lecavalier just finished an interesting radio interview on local AM sports station ESPN 1040, where he deftly eluded to a number of things we've talked about here (questionable calls by the refs, a no-system approach by Barry Melrose). I'll talk about that later. What I really wanted to get posted was his rather funny arrangements he is stuck with for tomorrow's game against the Islanders.

To any familiar with Tampa, Saturday is the annual Gasparilla Parade - basically our attempt to pretend like we are New Orleans, complete with drunken idiots, occasionally topless girls, many arrests, and even a bit of "going number two" in places you should not be doing such things.

So with massive street closures and a generally gigantic presence of foot traffic around downtown, Vinny says he is actually hitching a ride on a police boat. But he says that will only get him so close, so Vinny will take a "golf cart, or something" the rest of the way to the arena.

One more comment on goalies.

2009-02-05T18:24:00.002-05:00

A quote actually, from the always-reliable Lightning Strikes blog:

This is the fifth go-round for Ramo with the Lightning this season. "I was there in the plane thinking, 'This is pretty ridiculous,' " he said.

And people wonder why he's not playing 100%....

Who should be demoted to Admiral?

2009-02-05T15:05:00.006-05:00

When Mike Smith returns to the Lightning net, which could be a soon as Saturday, one of the two youngish netminders currently on the roster will head back to the Norfolk Admirals of the AHL. The other will likely hang with the team the remainder of the year as Smith's backup.
So who gets to stay?

The general idea would be the goalie playing better stays with the big club, while the other heads down to the minors. But the real answer depends on how the Lightning view their overly padded net right now.

Kari Ramo has been disappointing this year - not just in Tampa, but in Norfolk, too. His save percentage with the Admirals is well under .900, his goals against is at 3.78, and he has just 7 wins in 24 starts. (He was even traded in my current season on Xbox 360 NHL 09.) This from a goalie that not too long ago was playing in the AHL All-Star game and winning the goalie skills competition.

Meanwhile, Mike McKenna has been pretty good in his five or so periods of play with the Lightning, and his Norfolk numbers (11-10-1, 2.97, .904) are...well...better than Ramo's. Both play behind a pretty bad Norfolk team, with injuries turning most of their best defensemen - Smaby, Quick, Wishart - into Lightning call-ups. Riku Helenius is also hanging out in Norfolk, although he's further behind the development scale right now. And Mike Smith is only 26 years old.

Outside of Steven Stamkos, Ramo is considered the Lightning's top prospect, according to the very cool HockeysFuture.com. He makes more sense as a goalie to build on, being only 22 years old (McKenna is 25) and having already shown solid development in his AHL and international playing time. His backwards steps this year are concerning, but perhaps that's a product of the five roundtrip flights he's already made between his AHL and NHL homes. Playing every 18th night isn't exactly desirable for any goalie.

Which is why Ramo needs to head back to Norfolk while McKenna stays here. Honestly, we can't make an assessment on McKenna yet, so this has nothing to do with him. Ramo is a guy that can push Smith for playing time as early as next season, and at worst 2010/11. He needs to play to get better, not sit on the bench. You can never have too many goalies, particularly good ones. Even if you end up with two starters it can lead to one highly beneficial trade down the road for a position you do need.

Kari's season of ups, downs, call ups, and send downs only hurt his development and waste his season. The Admirals have two solid months of games left of the schedule, and Ramo, more than McKenna, needs the work.

Can I call it a conspiracy now?

2009-02-05T09:35:00.005-05:00

Because that's what this is starting to look like.

Look - lots of teams go through stretches of horrid officiating. The NHL's referees are considered to be some of the worst in professional sports. I know all of this. That doesn't mean I can't be angry about it when it happens to my team. Although, at this point, I'd be sort of horrified if it was happening to anybody.

Last night, the Bolts came tearing out, and I thought: yes. Where have those guys been? Hadn't seen them play like that in a while, and it was beautiful. Until Malkin went and broke Meszaros. There were two calls for this, and they both went to the Lightning. One was for too many men on the ice when Mez took too long to limp to the Away entrance, doubled over and in obvious pain. The other was for "unsportsmanlike conduct" when they argued the first. Because, I suppose, if a Lightning player gets injured, he needs to quickly get himself out of the Pens' way so they can go ahead and continue being more awesome than everyone.

Night before last. Islanders. Which, by the way, was sort of spooky: a blizzard and the Isles being godawful lately meant there were about six thousand people in the building. Unnaturally quiet. Halfway through the first, Jackman came barrelling up and clipped Ramo from behind. Ramo landed one place, his mask landed somewhere else entirely. Last night when Stamkos lost his balance and landed in Fleury's lap, he got two for goalie interference. But did Jackman get a call for turning our Backup Backup Backup Goalie into a yard sale? Of course not. During that game, they also managed to double Marty's penalty minutes for the entire season in five minutes of game time. They accused him of the sort of check that defensemen jockeying for position around the crease do all the time. I saw that happen multiple times, from both teams, in last night's game. Then to prove that they meant it, they waved off another goal.

The rest, I think, has already been covered here: Recchi's disallowed "kick" goal, the too-high goals that Marty and Stamkos weren't allowed to have - but when Crosby does that it's okay.

All I'm sayin' is, this team is perfectly capable of losing on its own. Especially once the defensemen get exhausted in the third. They don't need help. The few times they manage to sneak in and build up some momentum, let them have it.

The only highlight of all this is that McKenna - 'Who's That Guy?' - has looked great in net so far. I am wondering whether he or Ramo will be kept as Smitty's backup for the rest of the year. I'm also wondering what nickname he will be given so we can differentiate between two goalies named Mike, should he get the call up as I'm expecting. We're hockey fans, you know. We're easily confused.

Pens win 4-3, I throw a shoe

2009-02-04T22:41:00.003-05:00

I don't want to talk about this game.

I don't want to talk about the 3-0 lead the Bolts built through clearly superior play, then lost. I don't want to talk about the 2-minute 5 on 3 the Pens received after Malkin took a run at Meszaros with no intention to play the puck. I don't want to talk about the great penalty kill. I don't want to talk about the refs who once again screw the 'Ning. I don't want to talk about the easy reversal that hits a ref, and holds the play. I don't want to talk about the ensuing shot that hits Eminger's leg and makes it 3-2.

I don't want to talk about Matt Cooke (Vinny's shoulder knows that guy) and his B-movie acting that duped the idiots into sending Gary Roberts to the box to make it 3-3. I don't want to talk about Murphy's lost stick that leads to Malkin's overtime goal to win it 4-3. I don't even want to talk about the four slashes Vinny took uncalled on his way to scoring in the second.

I gently threw a shoe in anger after this one. It has been a disgusting five or six games from the stripes, and this is one they should have had on many fronts. Are the Lightning marked by the refs? Will they get another bounce this season? I don't know, and I don't want to talk about it.

Fifteen men in a hurt man's net....

2009-02-03T09:09:00.005-05:00

...yo ho ho and a bottle of Gatorade.

It's crowded in Tampa's crease, and at the same time very empty. We currently have five goalies: Injured, Injured, Suspended, Brand-New, and Who's That Guy? Take it from the top.

Injured - Mike Smith. It's listed as a day-to-day upper-body injury, and nobody precisely knows what, though the local beat writers both made a point of mentioning that they'd last seen him wrecking the place after getting pulled off the ice in that Flyers game. They theorize that he'd hurt his hand while venting his frustration, although they haven't got to ask him yet. I consider this conclusive evidence that one's dignity is stored somewhere in the upper body, because by the end of that game the Bolts didn't really have any. Thanks ever so, War Room - y'all done broke our starter.

Injured - Olaf Kolzig. His surgery went well, and his ruptured tendon is now a freshly attached tendon. That has to be horribly painful - at least by the standards of us fragile humans who are not hockey players. A mere mortal would be seventeen miles high on Demerol at this point; Kolzig, being a hockey player, will be back on his feet in a week, doing something gentle like gladiatorial combat to rehab himself for more hockey.

Suspended - Karri Ramo. Is having a less-than-memorable season in Norfolk, which I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with flying down to accompany the Lightning once a month without ever setting foot on ice while the game is on.

New: Riku Helenius. (Not this one. Hey, somebody had to go there.) I don't know a thing about him except that he's Finnish and about fifteen years old and wears Khabibulin's old number and has been in something like four teams (counting the Lightning) this past year. He played the last few minutes of the Flyers game while Smith was busy demolishing the locker room. Got two saves, too. Second one was a real showy glove catch.

Lastly: Mike McKenna. .... who is that guy?

Lawton, the guy who made the news by saying that everyone (Vinny) is being evaluated but nobody (Vinny, Stamkos) is being traded, swears they looked into getting a goalie off waivers, but there weren't any available. The owners being what they are, I am sure they also considered dismantling all the ones we have and building an uninjured Frankengoalie out of the parts. That could've been interesting, actually. And not much of a shocker coming out of Tampa. Whose number would the Frankengoalie wear?

It's Gasparilla week, y'all. We have to make the pirate jokes, or we get forced to walk the plank.

As for Recchi's soccer goal...

2009-02-01T21:02:00.002-05:00

I don't have too much of an issue there. Those are usually seen pretty well through replay, and the rule is cut and dry. It certainly wasn't intentional - as he said after the game, he didn't even know it hit his skate. But all they care about is the kicking motion.

But it did remind me of the 2003 playoffs against the Devils. I believe it was Game 5, which the Devils won in overtime to clinch the series, where a late goal by Fredrik Modin was disallowed due to a kicking motion. On that play, Modin was planted in front of the net (just like Recchi) getting mugged by the defense (just like Recchi). In the ongoing fight for position, Modin got a crosscheck and a slewfoot, and he "kicked the puck" because the his skate was shoved into the puck. I think that goal should count, but the rule doesn't allow it.

It's like if I stood Indi in front of the TV, then I slide by and shove her into the screen and blame her for breaking the center of my entertainment center. Why should she get punished for my transgression? Why should Modin lose the goal?

I do take offense, however, to all the illegal action that goes uncalled in front of the net if it kills a goal like Recchi's. I'm all for letting them play out there, but if that's the case, the rule needs to be altered to allow players in front of the net some leeway out there.

Stamkos Goal a Goal?

2009-02-01T20:43:00.005-05:00

I admit I missed the Carolina game, so I haven't seen Marty's no-goal (which was a reversed call). But I did get a look at both disallowed goals in the Flyers game, both live at the rink and later on TV - I tend to DVR all hockey games for just this reason.

I have no doubt Stamkos's goal was good. The TV replay confirmed what I saw at the game. I think the referee was blinded by the downward angle the punk traveled. He was also blinded by Stamkos's ass - the referee who waved off the goal was along the side boards to the goalie's right, behind Stamkos. There's no way from that angle that he even saw where the punk touched the stick, which makes it a travesty to wave off the goal on the ice. Those calls rarely get overturned from replay, meaning if he ruled a good goal on the ice, it likely would have stood. Marty's overturn was an exception.

But what an amazing reaction from the kid to put that puck in and get the Lightning to within 1, even though it didn't count. If he was skating with a better offensive winger than Downie, he'd of gotten a pass and buried it on a one-timer from the side of the net.

Disallowed calls

2009-01-31T17:01:00.004-05:00

I will spare the rant and instead give you a quote that succinctly clarifies my opinion.

"Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is a conspiracy."

From the Department of Goalies...

2009-01-28T15:07:00.008-05:00

Kolzig's out. There's a story about it here - short version is, his arm's messed up in a similar way to Brodeur, so it's not likely he'll be playing before the season ends.

With him out as backup, Ramo's the next logical choice. Except, not right now, because he sort of misbehaved (oh, what's so horrible about your goalie leaving the bench and joining a fight) and he's on a six-game suspension. After Ramo, we have Riku Helenius, who I know absolutely nothing about, including how to pronounce his name. He'll back Smitty up until Ramo's suspension is over, at which point Ramo will don the Baseball Cap Of Probably Not Playing Tonight.

Hey, at least he doesn't have to sit off by himself, which is the torment we bestow upon Away's backup goalie. But that's a story Dave wants to tell.

How The Clock Is Rolled Back

2009-01-28T01:28:00.004-05:00

Or, Why Does That Take So Damn Long?

1. Refs in Tampa call Toronto for approval of clock-change and official changing of clock in Toronto, which is then re-broadcast everywhere else.

2. Call gets forwarded to Montreal, which has stolen the hockey headquarters and hall of fame for their big fancy hundredth anniversary. Whatever.

3. Call gets answered by a machine. "Pour parler français, pressez le numéro un. If you are a filthy English pig with no brains, press two." They press two.

4. Call is forwarded to translator with a heavy accent, perhaps portrayed by Gerard Depardieu.

5. Translator to refs: "Please hold."

6. Translator to officials: "Yeah, I know, these idiots in that city that never even has ice in it ever unless it's made in a freezer, I don't know why they don't have brains. Aren't Americans supposed to play baseball?"

7. Officials to translator: "Okay. We watched that five times. Each of us, individually, watched it five times, so in total we watched it sixty-two* times. We can't see anything wrong with the call, except that it was called against LES HABITANTS THE GREATEST TEAM FOREVER. We should cancel their license for this injustice."

8. Translator to officials: "I know, right? What the hell is this about?"

9. Refs: [confer in the Half-Circle Of No Getting In My Face and try not to look like they're waiting for someone else to decide something about THEIR game]

10. Officials to translator: "Oh, fine. FINE. They can change the time. It is okay because they will burn in hell later. OH WAIT THEY ARE ALREADY THERE."

11. Translator to officials: [mad cackling]

(12. Toronto officials, locked in the basement: "HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR US? THEY WON'T LET US OOT. WE WANT TO GO HOME. OR AT LEAST PUT ON CLEAN CLOTHES.")

13. Translator to refs: "Eh, do what you want."

14. Refs to translator: "No, you have to change the clock."

15. Translator to officials: "They don't know how to do it."

16. Officials to translator: "Idiots. How they can think they play hockey I do not know. Here, we fixed it for them. Would they like a foot massage too? A nice selection of cheeses?"

17. Translator to refs: "Hokay. S'all good. Morons."

18. Refs: "Cool, man, thanks. Jerk."

19: Fans: "WHAT DOES IT TAKE HERE?"

20: Lightning: "So then Crosby says to him - y'all won't beLIEVE this - oh. Time? I'll tell you later. Don't let me forget, eh?"

* Yeah, that was on purpose.

Montreal fans practically beg Vinny to come "home"

2009-01-24T19:20:00.004-05:00

So I'm sitting here watching the Skills Competition (and yes, I am recording it) and Vinny received more cheers than any of the Montreal players. He got himself a 30-second standing ovation after being introduced. Marty earned himself quite the cheer as well. Then Alex Ovechkin came out of the tunnel, and all was silent.

For a city that hates hockey in Tampa, they certainly love our players.

Guess who's an All-Star now?

2009-01-23T04:15:00.002-05:00

We knew that Vinny was going to the All-Star game, no questions about that. He is our Big Damn Hero, after all. And we can't deny the Montreal press more time to spin silly rumors about Vinny defecting to the Habs -- as much as we wish we could. This is the Year Of Hab, after all.

But what about our Medium-Size Damn Hero, Martin St. Louis? As it turns out, Sidney Crosby has ducked out due to injury, so Marty's going to the All-Star game too.

I am pleased, because Vinny without Marty is like... Bullwinkle without Rocky. Cyclops without Wolverine. Pinky without The Brain? I'm trying to come up with comparisons that aren't less-than-flattering cartoons, and failing. But you get my point. The two go together, and hopefully someday we'll have #4 and #26 hanging in the rafters at the Ice Palace.

(Dave, you better record this for me.)

Intent, goons, and superstars

2009-01-21T09:00:00.012-05:00

I have to come down in favor of hockey goons. This is why I like Slap Shot so much. The Hansons were great. They were like that in real life, too. A well-timed fight is damn near strategic. It energizes the team. It gets the audience going. And of course, all the players get a breather. I'm not interested in dirty hits. McSorley was a dick. But a good hockey fight, by the unwritten rules - gloves dropped, helmets off, and ending whenever someone covers - can change the course of a game. Admit it, we all loved it when Lecavalier took Iginla on during the Cup finals.

The NHL doesn't agree anymore. They want skill valued more than strength. That's all right. The Lightning philosophy leading up to the Cup was: Outskate The Hell Out Of Those Guys. It worked brilliantly.

The problem is that to enforce this lack of enforcement, they call penalties on everything that could, possibly, cause a team to send the goon line out and teach the other guys some respect. When in doubt, give a penalty. When the guy you're giving a penalty to has a history of getting called, you definitely call it. And then, maybe, you suspend him to teach him not to do something that'll get him another ambiguous call. Caveat: if he's a superstar let it go, unless it's an away game and/or the moon is dark.

This brings me to Artyuhkin. I don't think that was a dirty hit. All I know is: he collided with Peltonen, they both went down, and they both stayed down. When they got up they left the ice, and neither one came back until the next period. I can't tell you what Artoo's intent was, because I'm not inside his brain and even if I could get in there I don't speak Russian. His leg was out, sure, but that could have been Artoo bracing himself for impact, expecting to get slammed along the torso. We don't know. I'm not comfortable with the idea of calling penalties, or giving suspensions, for ambiguous intent.

An example: Matt Cooke's hit on Vincent Lecavalier last summer. The one that separated his shoulder and injured him severely. It looked like Cooke was trying to hit.. oh, wossname. Ouellet. (Who I always mistype as Omelet. Apologies in advance if I don't notice it.) But Ouellet was too fast, and Vinny was there along the boards, and they collided. That didn't look dirty, it looked like an accident. But it was Vinny who got hit, and he got hurt. Cooke didn't get a suspension or a penalty, but he got a fine. Tampa media swore it was the worst dirty hit in the history of dirty hits. Washington said it was an accident. There was lots of talk about Cooke's intent, but nobody could tell.

Another example, again with Washington: when Alex Ovechkin hit Jamie Heward. That one was scary to watch. Heward went down, and stayed down, and he's out indefinitely after a concussion. Ovechkin was pretty shaken up by this, and said so in interviews. He didn't get a penalty, or a suspension, or a fine. If that hit had gone around the other way, half the press would be clamoring for Heward to be thrown out of the league. Nobody said a word about Ovechkin's intent.

Cooke had a history of being a dirty player, and he's not a superstar. Ovechkin has a history of being a clean player, and he is a superstar. Heward isn't a superstar, but Lecavalier is. In those cases it seems pretty clear: protect the superstars, because they bring the fans' money. Penalize anyone who hurts them, because it hurts the league as a whole. From a business standpoint this might make sense, but I don't know that it works for the game.

Back to Artyuhkin and Peltonen. Neither is a superstar. Artyuhkin's occasionally considered a dirty player. I don't know how much of that is true. He does get penalties a lot, but - as Dave mentioned - he's big. He's an easy target. When other guys collide with him, they're going to come off worse. In a situation like this, a mid-ice collision with both players injured and arguable intent, I don't think penalties or suspensions are appropriate.

It's a fast game, it's a physical game. These guys go rocketing around on ice and slam into each other all the damn time. They collided, they got hurt, that should be enough. Leave the "intent" calls for when it's obvious, like that time Chris Simon kicked Ruutu in the leg.

(Goalie fights, on the other hand, are sheer awesome. When the goalies drop the gloves, you know it's on. It's pain-free to watch, really, because how can someone get hurt by a bare hand when he's wearing a couch?)

Is it weird to honor someone on the other team?

2009-01-20T09:25:00.002-05:00

If it is, then we're weird. Brad Richards got a nice video tribute during the game, showing a baby-faced Richie from what was probably his first training camp in the NHL, then various highlights from his time with the Lightning. Big cheers when the video showed him raising his Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP and then the Stanley Cup.

Fans were on his side all night. He got a huge cheer when his name was announced as a starter, and fans even cheered his power play goal that tied it at 1 in the first (boy do we miss him on the power play). And I saw more than one Dallas Stars #91 jerseys in the stands.

FYI - Richie's on pace for about 75 points, right at his career average. He leads the Stars in scoring. And he looks really weird wearing #91.

Brad all over

2009-01-19T17:03:00.005-05:00

Welcome back Brad Richards, who is back in the Forum with Dallas against his old team. At least we got something for him - don't get me started on the crap that was the Dan Boyle trade. His 2004 cup run, which produced a playoff record for game winning goals on his way to the MVP trophy, is not forgotten by most Lightning fans and should lead to a warm welcome.

Artyukhin suspended for 2 games

2009-01-19T16:51:00.007-05:00

Rightfully so. In the second period against the Panthers on Jan 17th, he went knee-to-knee on Ville Peltonen in what was either a deliberate trip attempt, a deliberate kneeing attempt, or simply two guys trying to avoid a full body collision leading to something worse.

Live, I thought it was at least partially intentional on Arty's part. Maybe he didn't want to bang knees, but it certainly looked like he put the leg out there. That's a dangerous play for both guys, and knee-to-knee hits are usually taken pretty seriously by the league. Even worse, he was called for tripping on the play, and the Panther's turned it into a goal on the way to their 4-3 comeback win.

Big guy like Arty needs to stay on the good side of the refs. He's taken a couple of obvious wrecking-ball penalties this year, which gets around in the referee circles, and leads to bad calls like he got against the Flyers. He gets 2 games, and it starts tonight against the Stars.

Game 45 vs Stinkin' Panthers

2009-01-19T16:31:00.004-05:00

The Score
Stinkin Panthers win 4-3

Besides the Score
Well, this was one of those games you shove in the trunk and forget to clean out, hoping it will just go away. Up 2-0 and 3-1, only to collapse in the second period then mount no comeback whatsoever in the third. And if anyone is thinking playoffs, this is a team the 'Ning will need to beat, basically, every time out the remainder of the way. Have to win the games against the teams ahead of you.

Sucks to be the Stinkin' Panthers starting goaltender...
But good to be the backup. Mr. Anderson let 3 in on 6 shots in the first period. Tomas Vokoun then shutout the Lightning the rest of the way. Kind of the opposite from a previous meeting with these teams, when Vokoun was pulled mid game and Anderson shut em' out the rest of the way (minus a shootout winner by the Bolts).

For the other side
I hate Nathan Horton, but in a "fans don't boo nobodies" kind of way. This guy continues to be a Lightning killer - 6 points in 4 games now, and 3 assists Saturday. Ooof.

He didn't score, but...
Stamkos has a nice interview on the TV broadcast with Rick and The Chief about his scheduled days off and the work he does those days other than strength training. Good insight on finding a spot to provide a good outlet for the defense, targeting the right man on the back check, and more technical things that sound very hockey-like. Good stuff, though. He also sat in the booth while the Stinkin' Panthers scored twice to tie the game, so no more interviews for him.

Vinny's Trade Rumors: A Re-Enactment

2009-01-17T14:08:00.012-05:00

Some Reporter: "Wouldn't Montreal just love to get Vinny for their hundredth anniversary?"

Some Other Reporter: "Yup. Been after him for years."

Montreal Press: "YES WE WOULD. Is he perhaps available?"

Tampa Press: "11-year contract. Did you not hear about this?"

Montreal Press: "The contract was written in English. It does not count. Besides, his no-trade clause does not apply until July First. Tell me, how is your American economy? How is a losing team in the forbidden subtropical South handling that? It must be difficult to maintain ice in Florida, with your American dollar being worth nothing."

Tampa Press: "WE'RE FINE. GO AWAY."

Montreal Press: "Ah. Bien. Denial. We must have something important here."

Tampa Fans: "Why don't you go bother the Panthers? We'll help them pack."

Panthers Fans: "Screw you!"

Tampa Fans: "Get in line!"

Bolts Owners: "Since you ask, well, we're, uh, we're kinda restructuring. Still."

Barry Melrose: "DIE IN A FIRE!"

Montreal Press: "STOP EVERYTHING. TAMPA IS HAVING A FIRE SALE. VINNY SHALL WEAR LE BLEU BLANC ET ROUGE NOW AND FOREVERMORE. WE DESERVE IT, LES HABS ARE A HUNDRED YEARS OLD. WE ALSO WILL WIN THE STANLEY CUP RETROACTIVELY FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS. AND EVERYONE WHO IS BORN IN QUEBEC WILL ONLY EVER PLAY FOR US."

(Toronto: "God, you suck. Mom always liked you better. I hate you.")

Tampa Fans: "OMGWTF."

Tampa Press: "Huh?"

Montreal Press: "YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME."

Tampa Fans: *panic*

Bolts Owners: "We just meant that we're, you know, taking stock. Of our stock. And that is something you do. In a business. Which this is. You have to look at everything. We look at everything."

Tampa Press: "We genuinely don't know how to spin that."

John Tortorella: "I so don't miss those assholes."

Dan Boyle: "This sounds familiar."

Montreal Press: "When they deny it means yes. When they do not deny it means yes. We shall have our way. I bet they can't even pay Vinny. Do you hear that, NHL?"

The Entire Rest Of The NHL World: "OMGWTF."

Tampa Fans: *prepare pitchforks and torches*

Bolts Owners: "WE NEVER SAID WE'RE TRADING VINNY."

Montreal Press: "You'd be stupid not to. We'll give you a ham sandwich. They don't have ham in Florida, do they? En francais it is called jambon. You know you want that."

Tampa Fans: *have backup favorite teams ready, just in case*

Vinny: "When did I ever say I wanted to be anywhere else?"

Montreal Press: "Just now."

Vinny: "No I didn't."

Montreal Press: "AHA! MONSIEUR IS HIDING SOMETHING."

Tampa Press: "No, really. Guys? Hello? What's going on?"

Bolts Owners: "Okay, here's a press conference. We never said we would, so we're not, although we said we have thought about it, so we can't say we didn't, but we won't. Besides, nobody's called us."

28 other teams: "We tried, but your answering machine was full."

Brad Richards: "Dude, I so know how you feel right now. Except not."

Vinny: "Ya think?"

Tampa Fans: "Don't ever leave."

Vinny: "I ever say I wanted to? No. I been good to you guys. You been good to me. We got this thing, see?"

Tampa Fans: "We love you, big daddy."

Vinny: "I know."

The Entire Lightning Team: "Can our locker room stop being Grand Central Station, just for maybe a week or two? We're okay. We really are. We all want to stay here. And we want to keep Vinny. He's a great guy."

Montreal Press: "THIS IS NOT OVER."

Tampa Press: "It will be in July. Unless the owners do something stupid first."

Bolts Owners: "What, us do something stupid? When have we ever?"

Tampa Fans: "OH GOD. We're doomed."

Vaclav Prospal: "What? My name is not Vinny. Go away. Learn how to say things that aren't in English."

Game 44 vs Flyers

2009-01-16T09:12:00.007-05:00

The Score
Lightning Win 4-1

Besides the Score
Three periods played three different ways. The Lightning's impressive shot total throughout was not initially impressive. The 14-7 advantage came with nary a true scoring chance, but credit the Lightning for being solid if not spectacular in the first - not always easy coming off the west coast road trips. Although neither team seemed all that interested in playing for the first 20 minutes.

Which made the next 20 even better. After Phily's power play finally clicked, the Lightning's three goals in two minutes were refreshing. Eight different players contributed to the three goals, essentially coming from three different lines, with Vinny's penalty shot goal making it four goals spread across the entire lineup. Balanced scoring. What do you know?

Marty's goal came off a great pass from Stamkos, which showed the skill and vision of this kid and why one day he'll lead this team in assists every year. He correctly chose to hit Marty coming down the right wing, and placed the pass perfectly. Six inches further ahead, and Marty has to sacrifice speed on the shot or reload for a better grip. Six inches further behind, and Marty misses it altogether. That's how playmakers pick up assists. Don't overlook the importance of where Stamkos's pass hit St. Louis' stick.

Same for Malone on Meszaros's power play goal, which needed to be fired quickly to get past Biron. The precision of the pass allowed that to happen. Then congrats to Pettinger, who took the shot when it was there, which led to Craig's cleanup goal. Passing when correct, selfishness when required.

The Bolts clamped down quite Devilishly in the last 20. After Vinny did his thing on the penalty shot, which made him a pretty good 4 for 9 in his career (better than his shootout numbers, which are down this year), the Flyers and their awfully quiet fans never threatened.

Sucks to be Strong
"Haduken" Artyukhin was penalized early in the second for being large. Seriously, two minutes for enormity. He simply gained position on his way to the offensive zone corner to control a dump, and his strength won out. He and the Flyer D-man went to the puck, but Arty's positioning and general body size kept the Flyer from winning the race. Then the Flyer fell down. Then Arty went to the box.

For Indi
Since his "resting" against the Ducks, Stamkos has points in three straight. And all as a part of the Lightning's first goal of the game. Kid's coming along. Don't worry.

For the other side
Mike Richards is a crazy good hockey player. He was the most dangerous skater on the ice yesterday - for either team. The Flyers have a true top line stud for the next 10 years.

He didn't score, but...
Steve Downie used a couple of major hits in the second period, one at open ice, to really energize things in the building. The Lightning were dominant from then on, and this out of a guy St. Louis could probably push around. As long as he keeps it clean, he's a major 4th line pain-in-the-ass asset.

One more note on the Surgeon General

2009-01-16T09:00:00.004-05:00

I actually own a jersey with my last name on the back, which is totally unacceptable unless it was a gift and the gifter didn't know any better, or you're a 7-year-old. In my case the former, so I'm slightly stuck with it. But it's worse for the poor Surgeon General.

The Lightning presented him with a jersey, of course, and the name on the back was actually "Surgeon General." I think spanned two lines of lettering, one on top of the other.

Lame.

At least it didn't say Rear Admiral.

Flyers, 15/01/09

2009-01-16T01:49:00.009-05:00

I'll leave all the important stuff to Dave, because he is the Department of Important and I am the Department of Smartass. So, here are some notes from tonight's game.

The Surgeon General of the United States is here for a ceremonial puck drop to start the game. His name is Rear Admiral Steven Galson. He's popped by to present an award. The words "rear admiral" and "surgeon" make me think of Stephen Maturin, which makes me think of trepannings. This is not a happy place, mentally.

Detroit had the Knitting Lady. Tampa has the Horn Guy. We don't know who he is, but he's somewhere up in the nosebleeds -- right under Mishkin's booth, if the horn volume on the radio broadcasts is any indication. He brings an air horn to every game. He sets it off randomly, usually trying to get the crowd cheering. It rarely works. But he tries anyway. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

We shall pause for an important commercial announcement:

NOW FROM THE MAKERS OF SAW: THE SO VERY DRAMATIC AND HEROIC LIGHTNING COMMERCIALS. WATCH EVERYONE POSE LIKE HEROES. BIG DAMN HOCKEY HEROES. IT'S LIKE THE FUCKING JUSTICE LEAGUE HERE BUT WITH SCADS OF PADDING INSTEAD OF SPANDEX. LOOK AT OUR HEROES. IN FRONT OF ALL TWENTY-FIVE FEET OF TAMPA'S CITY SKYLINE*. WITH CGI LIGHTNING FLASHES. AND MUSIC. THE MUSIC IS DRAMATIC, BECAUSE HEROES NEED DRAMATIC THEMES. WHY DIDN'T WE JUST GO ALL OUT AND LICENSE CARMINA BURANA HERE, GUYS? BIG. DAMN. HEROES.

*(I'm a native and allowed to say that. Also, the bay smells like dead whale.)
(Couldn't we have crappy commercials and better defense instead? I'd be okay with that, really.)

Vinny got a sweet penalty shot because Hartnell, the Thrower of Gloves, interfered with him on a breakaway. (Vinny plus breakaway is awesome, unless you're the goalie for Away. Then it is like being mugged by a ninja.) He nailed it, too. Has Hartnell learned this time? It'll be more entertaining if he hasn't.

A note on Vaclav Prospal. He's one of my favorites, because he's - oh, how to put this politely? He's utterly bugfuck nuts. The only happier man when the horn goes off is Alex Ovechkin. (The two of them celebrating together, Prospal and Ovechkin, would probably incur a fine by the FCC.) The downside to this, it seems, is that as happy as he is when he's scoring, that's how grouchy he is when he's not. I get the idea he and David Koci went out into the team parking lot in San Jose and started slashing tires with shivs made from skate blades. Prospal looked a bit murderous tonight. But that's what makes him fun.

A win at home is nice, after all this time of it not happening and everyone drowning in denial and/or alcohol. I'd like to see more of it. Hope we do.

Four Things Steven Stamkos Tripped On Without Falling Over:
- A bump on the ice.
- Martin Biron.
- Matt Carle.
- Another Flyer whose name I didn't catch.

Before we go: please keep the Rear Admiral Surgeon away from the locker room. I don't think anyone needs extra holes in their skulls.

The Season Thus Far

2009-01-14T16:24:00.003-05:00

Goalie Mike Smith performs an interpretive dance depicting the first half of the 2008-09 season.