As the playoffs wane on, topical stories about the Lightning, well, wane off.

Sure, there's continued conjecture about who the Lightning will bring in in net, what they'll do with all those draft picks, and how on Earth they're going to unload Vincent Lecavalier's contract. But other than that, there's really nothing hockey-related going on with the team.

And sadly, that's the case for most teams this time of year. Pretty soon, all hockey fans will be deliberating about the draft, free agency, and whether or not "it's October yet."

But in the mean time, meaningless banter is all we've got, right?

So, here are your links for the week:

Your Lightning links:

• Teddy Purcell has a blog going to keep track of his World Championships. It always cracks me up how these player blogs are always paved with great intentions, and then get shorter and shorter, and fewer and further in between.
  
• According to a Swiss online newspaper, the Bolts have offered a contract to Swiss stud Damien Brunner. That'd be okay. However, there is some question to the validity of this claim.
  
• Would Tampa be a good fit for Rick Nash? Well duh, but I don't think even Stevie is good enough to make those logistics work.

Continue reading this post »

[Warning: much of this post is sarcastic.]

Shot blocking is the new evil in the NHL. It's apparently preventing teams from scoring, and thus limiting the masses' entertainment value. I guess you've always got to have something to rail against, but this one seems more than a little silly.

Due to that, everything's gone back to the bad-old-days of clutching and grabbing - though, no one's really being clutched at or grabbed. Regardless, it's slowing down the game; it's making the game boring. Or, so they say.

Then there's the whole "defense is killing the game" thing again. Despite the old saying of "defense wins championships" - which we've all seen over and over again as being pretty much true. But, no, that's not good enough. Scoring has to win championships, not boring defense.

And so the hockey media-driven narrative goes on....

How about this for a solution? Let's just eliminate the position of defenseman, since they're not doing anyone any good anyways. Shot blocking? Who needs it. Stopping opposing forwards from scoring? That kills the game. Preventing players from running your goalie? Can't do that because that's "interference" or "holding".

Continue reading this post »

"this decision represents an organization making a trade-off between a demonstrable on-ice value (the scoring potential of Kostitsyn and Radulov) and a more nebulous off-ice moral principle (players must all obey the same curfew). Coaches and managers make these kinds of trade-offs all the time in hockey- think Laviolette's Dry Island or Burke's Pre-Deadline Deadline- and in every case they should be questioned. Every time a team decides to put ideology ahead of pragmatism, every time they put something ahead of winning, we should ask why" -Ellen Etchingham, May 2, 2012, What is Team Culture For? (And Six Other Questions for the Nashville Predators)

"In Parityland, the winner doesn't necessarily have a magic formula and the loser didn't necessarily do anything wrong. Winning doesn't necessarily mean being inherently better at hockey anymore. Rather, it becomes a tautology: the winners won because they won, because somebody had to win, and they happened to be ahead when time ran out. " -Ellen Etchingham, April 20, 2012, On Parity

Philosophical consistency is not a strong suit of the human mind. I know I don't have it, not really. It's certainly not prevalent in sports analysis. Even as Ellen Etchingham chastised the Predators for putting character above winning, she recognized the absurdity of labeling individual players as "winners" and worried over the ways that league parity affected how teams have to play to win. And she's not the only writer to be so conflicted about the balance between "going for it" and "doing it right."

You hear it throughout the hockey world. Winning is everything. Winning ought to be the only consideration. Except for all the other considerations. Don't put your petty moralities above winning, unless your morality involves making a statement against defensive trap systems (the wrong way to win), or about the unacceptability of head shots (which should get guys taken out of the game no matter what), or realizing that a good player on a bad team is still a good player.

We actually have a complex relationship with winning. The same person who criticizes a coach or general manager for putting character above winning may also criticize a player or the league for not putting character above winning. Our job isn't to make good men, except when we need our players to be good men, aware of the humanity of the people around them. Teamwork only matters when it's mechanical in nature--players understanding what their teammates are doing on the ice--unless we need players to come together for each other and the fans.

Continue reading this post »

Your Norfolk Admirals take on the Connecticut Whale in game 6 tonight, and this is their chance to close out the series. They lead 3 games to 2 in what has been a back and forth sort of series. It has seemed that they boys come out flat one game then come out fighting the next. Wednesday night saw an aggressive, fast, confident Norfolk team defeat an increasingly frustrated Connecticut team in a neutral site game (at the Bridgeport arena rather than at the Whale's home in Hartford).

Alex Picard (2g), Ondrej Palat (1g, 1a), and Pierre-Cedric "Nacho" Labrie (1g, 1a) all scored on Wednesday, and while Tyler Johnson had only one assist (on Palat's goal) his presence seems to have an effect on the team, even when he isn't hitting the scoresheet. Jaroslav Janus made 22 saves in his first playoff shutout.

If the Admirals win tonight, they will go on to round 3. If not, they have another chance on Sunday, in an early evening game (5pm ET start). The winner of this series will face the winner of the St. John's Ice Caps - Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins series.

Radio: 1021thegame.com Online video: AHL Live. Game starts at 7:00pm ET.

With all of the focus on goaltending, the defense has been sort of left out in the cold. But, that's fairly typical. When it comes to hockey, people tend think about offense and goaltending, not defense.

Still, that's a bit discouraging. A good defense will make a good goalie look like a Vezina candidate, and a bad defense will make a good goalie look very mediocre. But, as many people just noticed the goaltending and not the defense, they see that a goalie is just good or bad and that's all there is to it.

The two are very much intertwined. Goaltending is not a singular position in that goalies just do their thing and the rest of the team does theirs. The defensemen are the bridge between the forwards and the goaltending, and they interact a great deal between the two. Which is why it often takes a while for defensemen to mature - they have to not only learn what their goalies want them to do, but also what their forwards want them to do.

The standard operating procedure for the Detroit Red Wings for many years now is to have outstanding defensemen, and have good - but not fantastic - goaltenders. With a few exceptions, of course. And the Wings have had the closest to what any would call a dynasty in decades.

Also keep in mind that General Manager Steve Yzerman was a member of that organization as both a player and a member of their front office for 27 years.

Which isn't to say that goaltending isn't an issue for the Tampa Bay Lightning, because it is. But, so is the defense. Would it be easier (or better) to upgrade the goaltending, or upgrade the defense?

So the question of the week is....

There are a number of things that need to be addressed by the Tampa Bay Lightning this offseason, but which do you feel is more important and why - improving the defense, or improving the goaltending?

Continue reading this post »

"Now they will tremble again, at the sound of our silence."

-Captain Marko Ramius, The Hunt for Red October

The NHL playoffs are in full crescendo. Not only have the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs been intense, and with plenty of controversy, but they have also been popular as TV ratings and fan buzz shows. Sure, it's been helped by having six teams (the Rangers, Devils, Capitals, Bruins, Flyers and Penguins) from the northeast media corridor in the playoffs, but let's not have that take away from a very competitive and unpredictable playoffs so far.

But even as the conference finals loom large and the Stanley Cup Finals shortly after, there's a hidden malice that stirs. No fan dares give it more than a glancing mention, instead focusing on the triumphs and pratfalls of the 2012 playoffs.

Yet this noxious bane lingers, unseen, waiting for its moment, waiting for the lull of the off-season to unleash its horrors on the idle masses. Waiting.... Waiting....

Continue reading this post »