On a weekend when everyone around the U.S. was thinking “Superbowl” there were still enough hockey fans to fill up the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Filling up the Forum is one of the things the Tampa Bay Lightning does best. On the eve of Superbowl Sunday, they hosted their neighbors to the south, the Florida Panthers from Sunrise, who are having a great season thus far with a little over 30 games remaining. These two teams always seem to flip-flop, meaning when one is having a good season the other is not, and this season is no exception. The Panthers are currently in first place in the Southeast Division as the Lightning struggle in second from last with little chance of making the playoffs this year. But that has not stopped them from going on a tear since beating the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins in mid-January to break a seven-game losing streak. The Panthers vs. Lightning interstate rivalry favored the boys from South Florida. In the opening period of play, the Panthers were playing pretty tough, especially for a team that had just played their hearts out the night before, edging out the Winnipeg Jets 2-1. But then...the Lightning struck…. several times in fact.
Ice hockey is a tough sport. In fact being tough is probably the most important quality of a good hockey player. Finesse, skating ability, strength, fitness, talent…. the list goes on and on for the qualities coaches look for in their players, but toughness, well that’s something that just goes along with the territory. In a sport that encourages participants to skate as fast as possible while fighting over a hard rubber disc that is flying around the ice at about 60 miles per hour, well you do the math. As for longevity in this game? Good luck. After playing hockey throughout most of their childhood, then being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to be chosen to play in the minor leagues, an elite group of players consider themselves among the most fortunate men on the planet just to be drafted into the National Hockey League. The jury is still out as to whether that is an accurate assessment or not. You see the average NHL career hovers right around five years. Oh sure there are quite a few players who make a career out of it and become big stars along the way but even they usually last about ten years. Bobby Orr, one of the greatest and most talented hockey players to ever lace up a pair of ice skates, had a storied career full of accolades – trophies, records, highlight reels, all of the stuff that sports legends are remembered by. His career lasted only ten years, cut short by a pair of badly mistreated knees.
Enter Martin St. Louis of the Tampa Bay Lightning. He played in his 900th career game last weekend when the Lightning took on the Panthers at the Tampa Bay Sports Forum. Most any other player would have been content just to see the crowd’s reaction when the jumbo-tron flashed that information for all to see, but not Marty. He was his usual lightning rod self that evening, playing marvelously and scoring his 6th career hat trick on a night when St. Louis, Lecavalier, Stammer, and the rest of the boys from Tampa Bay could do no wrong. Marty is 36 years young and his teammates call him the heart and soul of the Lightning, a sort of energy source that the other players can plug into and recharge themselves whenever they are running low.
And speaking of energy sources – The Tampa Bay Times Forum recently installed a brand new source of lightning to energize the crowd when necessary. There are now two Tesla coils, one on each end of the rink, hanging high among the ceiling rafters, that are fired up when the crowd goes ballistic after a Lightning goal and at the beginning of each period. These people in the Tampa Bay organization really know how to put on a hockey game.
So the Panthers-Lightning rivalry was a little disappointing from a Panthers fan’s perspective, as they never really were in contention after the first period. Their victory over the Jets the night before had taken away much of their steam, and by the third period most of them looked pretty gassed. It might have been a different game had they been fresh, but that’s life in the big leagues, eh? They might want to turn up their game just a notch as they try to defend first place and secure their playoff birth as the 2011-2012 NHL season winds down. It’s lonely at the top. Pretty awesome….. but lonely nonetheless.
Comments