"Football is king in Florida" - virtually every sports pundit in the world

"We stink" - virtually every football fan in Florida in Fall of 2011

Football fans in the state of Florida have not had a very enjoyable autumn, with perennial winning programs under-performing and in some cases, failing to meet even the lowest expectations of excellence. If not for all the intense scrutiny football gets, people might take notice that it's the two NHL teams that are currently doing the best job of representing the Sunshine State in the world of sports. And not just by default.

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I was going to write a rant. I was going to go off on how people who don't regularly follow the Tampa Bay Lightning shouldn't jump to conclusion about this team after only one game. Then I was going to try to prove that they weren't a boring team by looking at some statistics and talking about them - assuming that they told the story I thought they would.

Then I realized that no one cares - and no one should care, as a matter of fact.

This was one game; one-eighty-second of an entire season. This wasn't even a snapshot of either team. The game was an aberration - not just for the Lightning, but for the Philadelphia Flyers as well. The Lightning doesn't typically play like they did, neither do the Flyers, and games between the two teams are definitely not that weird as a general rule.

To put it shortly, all of the outrage over this single game is pointless. There is no conspiracy, no grand master plan to ruin the game of hockey. The Flyers did something unusual to counter what the Lightning often do, and it was on national TV. If this game has been locally broadcast in both cities, what happened on the ice would've been written off as an oddly comical thing and nothing more.

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Visitors to Tampa Bay who have pre-conceived notions about the area's association with the sport of football might be surprised at how they're greeted at the airport. The Tampa Bay Lightning have taken another significant step in establishing their identity in the Tampa Bay community by entering a promotional partnership with Tampa International Airport (TIA).

"Going to a hockey game is a lot of fun, and we want to have some fun out here at the airport and bring some attention to one of Tampa Bay's favorite sports teams. Lightning fans love their hockey. We do, too." -- TIA CEO Joe Lopano 

"I looked at our visiting team fans my first season, and at times, I saw too many visiting team fans. But, in fact, we believe that more people travel to come to see games here in Tampa Bay than perhaps any other city in the NHL and they come right here through this airport. Tourism is a huge deal to our community. So we've come all the way around. We actually support those visiting team fans and we encourage them to come here. Because Tourism is a critical, critical part of our economy." - Lightning CEO Tod Leiweke

The airside tram connecting the TIA's main terminal to "Airside A" has been wrapped in a "Go Bolts" theme and the recorded voice of Lightning captain Vincent Lecavalier will greet passengers on that tram as they head to and from the terminal.

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It's safe to say that anyone who hasn't visited Tampa's Channelside district in the last 20 years wouldn't recognize the place. Gone are empty, decaying warehouses, storage yards surrounded by chain link fence, and unnavigable service roads. They've been replaced by an aquarium, luxury condominiums, hotels, a convention center and a streetcar line.

Sitting in the middle of it all is the building that we Lightning fans consider the center of our hockey universe, the St. Pete Times Forum, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The neighborhood is a lot nicer than it was back then, but there's still some work to do. Especially with extremely high profile events headed to Tampa in the very near future. Now is the time for city government and the business community to get together and start developing the area to it's true potential. 

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With a number of teams struggling financially, there have been various cities talked about for relocation. One of those places is Seattle. I'd hoped to get a more comprehensive write-up about the pros and cons of Seattle this offseason, as I grew up in that area, but that didn't happen and might be for another time. Which is too bad since one of our readers and friends of the site, MTBoltFan, has a really nice write up ready to be incorporated into such a thing. But I digress.

The problems with Seattle boils down into two things: ownership possibilities and an arena. The ownership situation is a bit murky, and I think we'll leave that for another day. There are potential owners, but nothing serious at this point.

As for the arena situation.... Seattle doesn't have a suitable arena, as the entire building called Key Arena is built around a basketball court, and Mercer Arena was demolished. There's been talk about building a facility in the suburb of Bellevue, but that's still being discussed. The two major junior team arenas seat 8513 (Everett Silvertips) and 6500 (Seattle Thunderbirds), respectively, which are far too small for an NHL-caliber team.

Simply put, there is no building available in Seattle, and almost no chance that Key Arena will be torn down and rebuilt - because it would have to be to work for hockey. It is physically impossible for Key Arena to be adapted for an NHL hockey rink. And due to many state construction projects in the Seattle area, there is no public money to build one, either.

And that leaves us with Tacoma, which is approximately 30 miles (50 km) south of Seattle.

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John left me in charge of this today, so I'm going to do it a bit differently. Because, you know me, I've just got to be different. Don't worry. He'll be back with your regularly scheduled programming next Tuesday night.

So instead of links, I'm going to go with a single link. That's right - just one. This is your assignment: read what Mr. James Mirtle has to say, and then either contribute your own suggestion, or promote one of the ones listed.

What rules will the NHL test at its R&D camp?

Led by Brendan Shanahan, the NHL's senior vice president of player safety and hockey operations, the league will be holding its second annual research and development camp next week in Toronto to test out a few tweaks on the game.

There's a great big long list of what they'll be looking at, but below I've listed a few of the more interesting items with thoughts on what these changes may mean.

Tampa Bay Lightning CEO Tod Leiweke said in the St. Pete Times this weekend that the team has sold about twice as many season tickets than they had at this point last year.

"We’re right at 10,000, maybe 10,005. We feel good about that...Our job is to sell out every game. We still have work to do to get to that. But to say we’d be at 10,000 right now, that’s a heck of a target." -- Tod Leiweke, CEO

Obviously, the Lightning are thrilled with that. To have that money in the bank means seats sold in August are seats they don't have to worry about selling in January and February. But beyond that, it's validation for the things the organization has done and continues to do. It's a vote of confidence from fans (consumers) in the form of dollars.  

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With the Atlanta Thrashers leaving the state of Georgia, a lot of talk has been about how Atlanta "just isn’t a hockey town" – whatever that means. This statement actually makes no sense to me. But maybe it’s because I’m a hockey fan.

Yes, there are places that have a reputation for being ambivalent about sports in general. Although, I would still argue that it depends entirely upon the sport and how it's presented to a city/region. And while Atlanta is labeled as this sort of a city, one that can take or leave its pro sports teams not matter how well they're doing, they do seem to turn out pretty well for Georgia Tech college football games (capacity for Bobby Dodd Stadium is 55,000). Obviously, the professional teams in that city aren't doing what the local university is to draw fans.

You see, I genuinely believe that any place can be a hockey town – with the right kind of management, and the right type of marketing.

The management section is in regards to how the team is built and managed. And we’ve all seen some teams seriously poorly managed, haven’t we. Tampa Bay Lightning fans have to look no farther than the ugly mismanagement of OK Hockey a couple of years ago. Tampa, which is obviously a hockey town, was this close to losing the team because of them.

The marketing part is a bit more complicated. Many teams in the NHL are run by Canadians – and they’re run well, too, don’t get me wrong. But the missing piece to the puzzle is the marketing. You see, they don’t have to market hockey in Canada. All they have to do is announce a game, and then people just show up.

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