With Hedman and more, what's next for the Lightning?

The Tampa Bay Lightning are a team with a colourful history, but not necessarily the kind that would please most hockey fans. Questions have been asked about the viability of the franchise since its entry in 1992 as an expansion team launched by Phil and Tony Esposito with the backing of a Japanese consortium.

Stanley Cup winners in 2004, the Lightning have flickered on and off--mostly off--since then. The drama surrounding the acquistion of the franchise by Hollywood horror flick producer Oren Koules and NHL mucker turned real estate stud Len Barrie, along with their inexplicable hiring of Barry Melrose as coach, a marketing campaign surrounding numero uno draftee Steven Stamkos straight out of a supermarket flyer, and the public chain yanking of Vincent Lecavalier have painted a portrait of the Bolts as dolts. Beyond all that, there may be the pieces of a good hockey team coached by the tenacious and tough Rick Tocchet, one mean mofo in his days as a player. And they DO have one of the top picks in the 2009 draft...

So what's next? Yahoo Sports takes a look.

INSIDE SHOTS: TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING TEAM REPORT

YAHOO SPORTS, JUNE 3 2009

Tampa Bay’s championship season still seems fresh in the mind of Lightning fans. But at the same time, it feels as if it took place a decade ago.

In actuality, it has been only five years since Dave Andreychuk was handed Lord Stanley’s Cup by commissioner Gary Bettman on June 7, 2004, after Tampa Bay defeated Calgary in Game 7 as the Lightning overcame a 3-2 series deficit to capture the only championship in franchise history.

While the five-year span keeps the memory fresh, so much change has occurred in that time frame that the franchise today bears little resemblance to the team that captured the community’s attention.

Since Tampa Bay won its title, the team has changed head coaches twice and fired the general manager. Ownership has changed hands while only two players from that championship team—Vinny Lecavalier and Marty St. Louis—still remain.

The fortunes of the team on the ice have plummeted as well, going from a potential dynasty with a young nucleus to a cellar dweller picking a new nucleus in the form of Steven Stamkos and holding the second pick in this year’s draft.

In terms of years, it wasn’t long ago Tampa Bay was on top of the hockey world. But where the team sits today seems like a galaxy far, far away.

Season Highlight: There weren’t many things that stood out in the Lightning’s season, but the feel-good moment of the year came on Feb. 4 when rookie goaltender Mike McKenna, a former undrafted ECHL all-star, pitched a shutout in a 1-0 victory against the New York Islanders in just his second career start.

Turning Point: During a practice in South Florida on Nov. 11, Barry Melrose was seen walking back to the team hotel while the players hit the ice following a heated meeting with their coach. The next day the Lightning lost to Florida 4-0. Two days after the loss to Florida, Melrose was fired, sending the team spiraling for two months as new coach Rick Tocchet attempted to implement a new system on the fly.

Notes, Quotes

• Tampa Bay continues to await word from associate coach Mike Sullivan on whether he will return to the team for next season. Sullivan has been granted permission by Lightning management to seek a head coaching position or an assistant position that would bring him closer to his family in Massachusetts. Former Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella said in March he wanted Sullivan on his staff with the New York Rangers, and Sullivan is believed to have spoken with the Rangers. The Lightning have said they would like to have an indication of Sullivan’s intentions by the end of May, so the process of bringing in a new assistant could begin if Sullivan intends to depart the organization.

• The Lightning will host a prospect camp in Tampa beginning July 7. Among the invitees will be Team Canada World Junior goaltender Dustin Tokarski and recently signed center Mitch Fadden as well the team’s draft selections—including the No. 2 overall pick—from the entry draft on June 26-27.

Quote To Note: “My involvement (in the evaluation process) will really be with our first pick. I like to have an understanding of what we are talking about, but those guys (Jim Hammet and Darryl Plandowski) are counted on to make those final decisions.”—Lightning general manager Brian Lawton, discussing his input into Tampa Bay’s first pick, while allowing the team’s player personnel director, Hamment, and head of amateur scouting, Plandowski, to make the call on the rest of the draft.

Roster Report

Most Valuable Player: Despite the losses piling up throughout the season, RW Marty St. Louis never let his game slip. While he led the team with 30 goals and 80 points, he also formed a chemistry with rookie Steven Stamkos in the final month of the season, proving the former league MVP has strong leadership worth as well.

Most Disappointing Player: Tampa Bay signed RW Radim Vrbata to a three-year contract worth $9 million hoping he would form a second scoring line with Steven Stamkos and Ryan Malone. But Vrbata never took off, was a healthy scratch at times and eventually returned to Europe to finish the season.

Free Agent Focus: Even with the likelihood of landing defenseman Victor Hedmen in the June draft, Tampa Bay will focus this summer on finding a veteran defenseman who can move the puck. Only two regular NHL defensemen, Paul Ranger and Andrej Meszaros, are under contract for next season. While Matt Lashoff is a restricted free agent and is expected to be a key player on defense next season, Tampa Bay will be on the lookout for someone to fill the No. 1 defensive role.

Player News:

• LW Evgeny Artyukhin needs to have a strong training camp next season if he hopes to stick with the organization. The 6-foot-5, 250-pound Russian skates as well as any player in the league, but he was a source of frustration for the coaching staff as they attempt to get him to play more consistently and to understand how they want him to play within the system.

• C Vinny Lecavalier, recovering from season-ending wrist surgery in April, is resuming normal activities, including taking some swings with a golf club. Coming off a sub-par year by his standards, Lecavalier will alter his offseason training program to help improve his skating quickness and acceleration.

• D Andrej Meszaros struggled at times adapting to a new role after coming over from Ottawa before last season. The 23-year-old started to show his strong two-way play before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury. The team needs Meszaros to start the season the way he played just before getting hurt and hopes to see more than two goals and 16 points in 52 games.

Medical Watch:

• G Mike Smith suffered a season-ending concussion in January and was still feeling the effects of it at the end of the season, showing only slow progress in his recovery. The team will keep close tabs on his recovery process, but he says he feels better.

• D Andrej Meszaros suffered a labrum tear in his left shoulder following a hit by Evgeni Malkin on Feb. 4 that required surgery on March 3. Meszaros is expected to be ready for the start of training camp.

• D Paul Ranger suffered a labrum tear in his left shoulder that required season-ending surgery on March 3. Rander underwent a similar surgery on his right shoulder last season and missed the first two games of the season before returning. Ranger is expected to be ready for training camp.

• C Vinny Lecavalier underwent arthroscopic wrist surgery on April 3. The Lightning captain has resumed full activities.

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Will the Bolts be zapping their way back to the playoffs again?

Over to you, GM Hockey Members!

It bugs me to no end that the Sens and Bolts entered the league at the same time, and the Bolts have a freaking Stanley Cup.

BAH!

That was due to the JM squared factor.

Cap'n Clutch wrote:That was due to the JM squared factor.

Good times...

Tampa Bay Lightning considering Adam Oates to coach the power play
Damien Cristodero, TampaBay.com, June 19, 2009

It's a long way from being official, if it happens, but the Tampa Bay Lightning is considering former NHLer Adam Oates as an assistant coach who will work almost exclusively with the power play. Oates, a center and power-play specialist in a 19-year NHL career, was a teammate of Lightning coach Rick Tocchet with the Bruins, Capitals and Flyers.

Adding Oates would not affect Tampa Bay's slow-moving search for an assistant coach to work behind the bench and run the defense during games. It also would not affect assistant coach Wes Walz, who was valuable last season as a liaison between Tocchet and the players and was invaluable in the video room, where he helped turn around Steven Stamkos' season.

Hiring a power-play coach would be a smart play for the Lightning, which finished 19th in the league last season with a 17.8 percent efficiency. Notable five-on-three failures late in the season exacerbated the problem.

Oates, 46, had 341 goals and 1,079 assists in a career that took him to Detroit, St. Louis, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Anaheim and Edmonton. He retired after the 2003-04 season sixth all-time in assists and 16th with 1,420 points.

EJ Hradek and Gabriel Desjardins team up to see what might give the Bolts a new spark.

LIGHTNING NEED TO ZAP BLUE LINE CRATER
After dealing Boyle, Tampa still rebuilding defensive corps
EJ Hradek, Gabriel Desjardins, ESPN INSIDER, June 17, 2009

Plugging Holes - Tampa Bay Lightning


The Hole: Defense ( … and more defense)

Tampa finds itself in a difficult situation. It has a bad team, but with the Islanders selecting Victor Hedman (in our scenario), they get John Tavares in the draft.
Normally a No. 2 pick -- think Evgeni Malkin, Eric Staal, Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza -- fills one of the many holes on the 29th-best team in the league. However, Tampa already has two offensive centers in Vincent Lecavalier and Steven Stamkos, who have huge upsides and give general managers nightmares when they think about trading them away. (Of course, the seven years and $54 million left on Lecavalier's contract is a nightmare in its own right.) None of this points to a solution for a defensive corps that was 23rd in even-strength shots per game, 29th in power plays allowed, and 18th in shorthanded shots allowed. Some of that can be blamed on injuries to every top defenseman they had, forcing Tampa to use 18 D-men during the season, but even in the best of all possible worlds, the Lightning couldn't dress seven NHL-caliber defensemen if their lives depended on it.

The Fix: Sign F Karlis Skrastins (UFA, Florida)

First of all, improving the defense from the bottom of the league to near the middle doesn't require anything rash. Lukas Krajicek is a restricted free agent and should be brought back on a long-term deal. Andrej Meszaros and Paul Ranger are young and have been reasonably healthy in the past, so they won't likely miss half the season again, and Tampa has a huge number of defensemen under age 23, many of whom were high draft picks who need to shake out. Skrastins takes the pressure off the player-development process. He has played on the penalty kill everywhere he's been and has been Jay Bouwmeester's defensive partner against other teams' top lines since he came over from Colorado.

Skrastins' +2.5 Defensive GVT would also rank him third among the entire Tampa Bay roster, with only Martin St. Louis (+ 4.6 Defensive GVT) and Ryan Malone (+ 3.4 Defensive GVT) faring better than the former Panther.

E.J.'s Take: Tampa doesn't have just a hole on defense. The Bolts have a crater on the blue line. The addition of a veteran like Karlis Skrastins -- at the right price -- wouldn't hurt. But I don't see him alone as a fix. A year later, it's still hard to believe they were dopey enough to trade top puck-mover Dan Boyle. That move created much of the current problem. And, to make things worse, they got virtually nothing in return.


This summer, if they decide to deal star C Vinny Lecavalier (and I think they will), they have a chance to address their defensive shortcomings. If they send their franchise pivot to the Kings, they should be able to get a good young defender or two.

If the Bolts are lucky, with the second overall draft pick, they'll get a crack at Swedish prospect Victor Hedman. If not, as this projection suggests, they might be able to trade back and still get a defensive prospect like Oliver Ekman-Larsson or Tim Erixon. Under any circumstances, they'll have a lot of work to do during the offseason.

Gabriel Desjardins is a writer for Puck Prospectus. E.J. Hradek is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine.



Note: A mainstay of Puck Prospectus's metrics is "Goals Versus Threshold" (GVT). The stat blends an array of offensive and defensive figures to measure the value, in terms of goals, a player contributes above what the marginal player would over the course of the season. A marginal player is one that could be replaced with a player of equivalent skill, e.g. from the minors. For instance, Evgeni Malkin had an offensive GVT of +18.9, a defensive GVT of +4.5 and a total GVT of +23.4 for the 2008-9 regular season, meaning that Malkin was worth 23.4 goals more than a marginal player over the course of the season, or worth about 0.3 additional goals per game. In the team context, GVT refers to performance above an NHL average team. For the regular season, the Detroit Red Wings had a +30.8 offensive GVT, a +15.1 defensive GVT, a -21.5 goaltending GVT, for a +24.4 total GVT. Therefore, at even strength, Detroit was 24.4 goals better than the average team.

From Tampa today, another report of sparks flying between the owners...

Bickering Lightning owners on track for messy divorce
John Romano, TampaBay.com, June 22, 2009

Turns out, the Lightning's troubles did not end with another lost season.

This morning, the woes grow deeper. Perhaps, by this evening, they will turn uglier.

There is unrest in the ownership group. There is dissension in the ranks. And, almost one year to the day after OK Hockey took control of the franchise, the possibility of a messy divorce between bickering owners is a real possibility.

Oren Koules and Len Barrie are scheduled to have a meeting today with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to determine which one of them will have the authority to make decisions for the franchise. In essence, the commissioner is determining custody of a hockey team.

And so the humiliation of an ownership group reaches a new crescendo. If you thought it was bad when Dan Boyle called them liars, or John Tortorella described them as cowboys or Barry Melrose accused them of being meddlers, then this is worse.

This makes them look like complete incompetents.

Which, hopefully, is the message Bettman delivers.

For months, there have been whispers of a rift between Koules and Barrie. Of differences of opinion on payroll, on Vinny Lecavalier, and on general manager Brian Lawton. And that is fine. Reasonable people disagree all of the time.

But these guys rarely seem to reach the level of reasonable. They do not understand compromise, and they do not grasp the concept of cooperation. Or, for that matter, honesty.

You see, Koules and Barrie have long denied any hint of boardroom brawling. They have talked and acted as if they are moving in unison, and dismiss anyone who suggests otherwise as a misguided critic.

Yet numerous people inside the organization and around the Tampa Bay business community have painted a much different portrait of the ownership group during recent interviews with Times beat writer Damian Cristodero.

They tell stories of various indiscretions, some minor and some serious, in the offices of the St. Pete Times Forum. They hint at money woes and personality clashes. They suggest this is a franchise in disarray, and one whose brand is being devalued in the eyes of fans and sponsors.

And so, as embarrassing as it might seem to have the commissioner of the league playing peacemaker between millionaires, the time is right. This is an opportunity to get turned back in a proper direction.

This should be the moment that Bettman hands control to Barrie.

Please, do not misconstrue that as a vote of confidence in Barrie. This is, after all, the guy who predicted the Lightning would win the division when, in reality, Tampa Bay won fewer games than any team in the NHL. He is the guy who has had public squabbles with Tortorella and Melrose. And he has, along with Koules, fibbed every step of the way.

But his shortcomings as the day-to-day boss are only suspected.

Koules' have been confirmed.

Too many people have said too many unkind things to not wonder about Koules' management style. To say there is unrest in the front office is to put it mildly. Koules has made the majority of the day-to-day decisions for the past year, and it's getting harder than ever to have any faith when he stands before you now.

Admittedly, this is nasty business, trying to figure out who should be in control.

Both men have heavy financial investments in the team, and both obviously want to see the Lightning succeed.

But, today, the fissure seems wide. 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.

The point is these differences must be resolved immediately. The draft is days away, and Lecavalier's no-trade clause kicks in on July 1. It is no exaggeration to say the fate of this franchise, for years to come, could very well be decided in the next 10 days.

And so it is time for Bettman to fix this. To lay down the law before this franchise is broken beyond repair.

The irony is this team has a long history with quirky ownership. It had the guys from Japan who weren't sure where or how their money was invested, it had the guy from Palm Beach who settled for the NHL because he couldn't afford the NFL and it had the guys from Detroit who were more enthusiastic about the real estate around the arena than the hockey team inside it.

When Barrie and Koules took over, it was the first time the team was to be run by hockey fans. By people who understood the game, and would have a passion for what happened on the ice.

And now, a year later, the disappointment is greater than ever.

So, yes, it is time to stop the embarrassment.

It is time to fix this ownership group.

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John Romano can be reached at romano@sptimes.com.

holy crap bettman is going to have to make a quick decision on this one these are two different approaches and with the draft in less than 4 days thing need to be done quickly

It's amazing that Bettman has allowed these two clowns and the shady business practices in the current Nashville ownership to happen under his watch, but he consistently shuts the door on Balsilie.

Mojo wrote:It's amazing that Bettman has allowed these two clowns and the shady business practices in the current Nashville ownership to happen under his watch, but he consistently shuts the door on Balsilie.

Yeah, and of course it's not personal.

What a mess! Two radically different approaches on which direction to take the team... I'm sure Vinny is loving all this and I'm sure Hedman can't wait to be a Bolt - heh heh. Sad.

shabbs wrote:What a mess! Two radically different approaches on which direction to take the team... I'm sure Vinny is loving all this and I'm sure Hedman can't wait to be a Bolt - heh heh. Sad.

It must be so deflating for the players to know that their team is in absolute shambles from top to bottom.

Mojo wrote:

shabbs wrote:What a mess! Two radically different approaches on which direction to take the team... I'm sure Vinny is loving all this and I'm sure Hedman can't wait to be a Bolt - heh heh. Sad.

It must be so deflating for the players to know that their team is in absolute shambles from top to bottom.

queue Lecavalier wanting to be traded? please don't make Ek right, sheesh

and we used to think melnyk was bad always making comments to the media at least he leaves the decision making to the guys who know what they are doing

Mojo wrote:It's amazing that Bettman has allowed these two clowns and the shady business practices in the current Nashville ownership to happen under his watch, but he consistently shuts the door on Balsilie.

Well, Balsillie can always offer to buy the Bolts and move them to Hamilton...he can call them the Boltsillies.