The goaltending stinks. The officials are crooked. The players are lazy. The fans are bailing. Rick Tocchet has black jack on the brain. Stamkos belongs in the minors. THE PESSIMIST is always angry and he won't hold back!
Two years ago Bolts coach Rick Tocchet pleaded guilty to running a sports gambling ring. It's a miracle he still has a gig in professional sports. Is he that good of a coach or is he starting his own book in Tampa Bay (not the literary kind)?
Joe’s good friend and the dean of Tampa Bay sports radio, “The Big Dog,” Steve Duemig of WDAE-AM 620 is reporting via his Facebook account that the Tampa Bay Lightning have fired coach Rick Tocchet just hours after the Bolts finished the regular season.
Though Joe is somewhat chagrin about this, it’s not a huge surprise. The Bolts have a new owner, Jeffrey Vinik, who Duemig reports is the person who pulled the trigger on Tocchet, not general manager Brian Lawton, who is basically a lame duck since his contract expires in June.
Another reason Joe is not surprised is that at the Olympic break, the Bolts were very much in playoff contention. After the Olympic break, the Bolts freefalled. Either that tells Joe the Bolts overachieved for Tocchet or the players tuned him out in the second half.
As with many teams, the coach is the ultimate fall guy.
Now the clock is ticking on Lawton. In short, Vinik doesn’t have to fire him as he contract will expire in a few weeks. If Tocchet was launched, it’s hard to believe Lawton will return.
[Update: Damian Cristodero of the St. Petersburg Times reports the other shoe has fallen. Brian Lawton is out.]
Steven Stamkos, in his second year in the league, became the third-youngest player at 20 in NHL history to tally 50 goals in a season. Below is the historic video of the feat.
Somewhere, Len Barrie and Barry Melrose are cussing out loud.
Joe nearly fell out of his chair this morning when he read how that nitwit, near-bankrupt (both morally and perhaps financially) former Bolts owner Len Barrie had a “handshake” deal to trade Steve Stamkos last year halfway through the season.
That’s the word from the notorious Larry Brooks from the notorious New York Post.
The Rangers started working on the Tampa house-of-cards ownership during the teams’ trip to Prague, where the clubs opened the 2008-09 regular season with a pair of games. Sather got the ear of co-owner Len Barrie, a former NHL player. Conversations continued after the clubs returned to North America.
By the time the Blueshirts visited Tampa on Thanksgiving of 2008, the talks had become serious. Barrie was asking to choose two or three from a wish list that featured Michael Del Zotto, Evgeny Grachev, Ryan Callahan, Brandon Dubinsky and Dan Girardi.
The deal, according to Sather, was struck. The Rangers would be getting Stamkos, who has scored 46 goals thus far this season, tied for second in the NHL with Alex Ovechkin and just one behind Sidney Crosby in the race for the Rocket Richard Trophy.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, specifically former Lightning owner Oren Koules, who has a piece of a brain.
Just how brutal would this team be without Stammer? Wow, talk about dodging a bullet.
This game pretty much sums up how frustrating the season has been.
The Bolts post a solid win against Boston, lay an egg against Columbus which pretty much kills their playoff hopes and then turns around and shuts out the Stanley Cup champs in their own house! WTF?
That written, the Igloo, which the Bolts played their final game in Wednesday night, has been good to the Bolts.
There are few players who Joe loves more than Marty St. Louis. The guy has a heart bigger than Tampa Bay.
Oh, yeah, he’s still damn good. But Marty is hardly getting any younger. He’ll be 35 this summer and next season will be the final year of his contract. Despite this, Lyle Richardson of TheHockeyNews.com believes Marty will continue to play for the Bolts beyond next season.
Tampa Bay Lightning veteran left winger Martin St-Louis is showing no signs of slowing down as he enters his mid-30s.
Playing on the Lightning’s top line with superstar sophomore Steven Stamkos, St-Louis entered this week leading the club in assists (60) and points (87) and sat fifth overall in league scoring.
His current contract has one year remaining paying him $4 million (with a cap hit of $5.25 million) and given his consistency and teamwork with Stamkos, one has to believe the Bolts will open contract extension talks with St-Louis after July 1.
He’s been a consistent 80-plus point player over the past four seasons, so re-signing him might cost as much, if not more than, his current salary. Still, with less than $27 million committed to seven players for 2011-12, it shouldn’t be a problem for the Lightning to keep St-Louis.
The desire to retain St-Louis will likely keep the Vincent Lecavalier trade rumors alive and well in the off-season.
Joe has no idea if Marty will stay or not. Let’s be honest, no one knows if general manager Brian Lawton will be back next season nor coach Rick Tocchet. So trying to speculate if Marty will return after next season is anyone’s guess.
While a lot of fans may be pointing a finger at Bolts coach Rick Tocchet for overseeing a team that plummeted like a cannonball after the Olympics despite being in the playoff hunt before the Olympic break, another person to keep an eye out for is Bolts general manager Brian Lawton.
There’s two factors involved.
One, while leading the Bolts in the front office, the team has not sniffed the playoffs yet. That’s not good.
Second, per Damian Cristodero of the St. Petersburg Times, the Bolts should have a new CEO by the time the draft rolls around in June. One can only guess that a new CEO will want his own man in place.
In a case of very bad timing, Lawton’s contract expires in June. So the new CEO, whoever it is, wouldn’t have to fire Lawton. He would just let Lawton’s contract expire.
The way Joe looks at it, Lawton is as likely if not more likely to be selling his house as Tocchet would be.
Pitiful performance by the Bolts. Even yanking goalies halfway through the first period didn’t help. Pissing in the wind like tonight are why this team won’t be playing in May.
There’s little to watch with the Bolts the rest of the season.
Sure, the Bolts are still mathematicallyin the running for a playoff berth, just like Joe still has a mathematical shot of hooking up with a Lightning girl.
Highly unlikely.
But one of the things to watch the rest of the season is the NHL’s budding superstar Steven Stamkos.
One way to just a player is by how clutch the guy is. Consider that on power plays, Stamkos recently passed former Bolts center Brad Richards as having the most power play points.
That’s clutch.
And Joe wonders just how rotten the Bolts would be without Stammer?
