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Quick Strikes: Tampa Bay Lightning host Brew Fest at AMALIE Arena

The Bolts

Justin continues the series that looks at the best players to wear every jersey number for the Tampa Bay Lightning. [Raw Charge]

The last time this series rolled around Brian Holzinger was featured. No disrespect to one of the fastest players to ever sport the Lightning bolt on his chest, but this number, one of the most famous in hockey, is now property of Tyler Johnson.

The ringleader of the TampaCuse invasion, Johnson does nothing but win wherever he plays. Despite his perceived shortcomings [sorry boss I couldn’t resist] he has settled into a reliable NHL point producer.

Last night, the Lightning hosted their annual Bolts Brew Fest at AMALIE Arena! The following is a tweet essay.

The Prospects

Long-time Orlando Solar Bears media guy Don Money breaks down the relationship between the Bolts and the Bears. [Pro Hockey News]

The relationship will begin with a huge bang on Thursday, September 27th when the Lightning play a preseason game at the Amway Center in Orlando against the Florida Panthers. It will be the second time the two in-state rivals will have met in the middle, the first coming way back in 1996. Tickets for that game will go on sale next week.

The Syracuse Crunch are making sure to keep veterans at the forefront throughout the renovations of War Memorial Arena. [CNY Syracuse]

“They are a great group of people that have kept the focus on the veterans and the War Memorial, and made sure all the construction we’re doing for concerts, for the Crunch, for events don’t conflict with the overall mission of the building,” County Executive Joanie Mahoney said.

Fighting is dying in hockey, and for fighters like Tom Sestito, it’s a tough transition to make mentally and physically. All those years of wear and tear don’t help, either. [Syracuse]

“Old’’ is relative, of course, and Sestito is still a month shy of turning 31. But the Rome native and ex-Syracuse Crunch enforcer knows that three decades of life might as well be twice that amount when so much of it is spent tossing your body around the ice.

The Game

There are seven NHL teams without a captain. Who fills those spots? Some of those spots haven’t been filled in years, do those teams plan to have a captain at all? [The Hockey News]

Over the past two seasons, the captaincy of seven teams has changed hands. Ahead of the 2016-17 campaign, Blake Wheeler, Alex Pietrangelo, Anze Kopitar, Derek MacKenzie and Connor McDavid were all named captains of their respective clubs. Last season, the ‘C’ was stitched to the jerseys of Roman Josi, Justin Faulk and Jordan Staal, albeit with the latter two players sharing the responsibility as co-captains of the Carolina Hurricanes.

What is this new young core that Marc Bergevin keeps advertising for the Montreal Canadiens? And I guess the unimportant question is whether that core is any good at that hockey thing. [Habs Eye on the Prize]

On September 15, 2014 the Montreal Canadiens kicked off the 2014-15 season with the annual charity golf tournament. They took the opportunity to announce the succession plan to the leadership team, as captain Brian Gionta was allowed to explore free agency, eventually settling on the Buffalo Sabres, while the heir apparent to the captaincy, Josh Gorges, was jettisoned by general manager Marc Bergevin in a trade to those same Sabres. Going into the season, the only lettered player remaining was the team’s longest-tenured player, Andrei Markov, who had worn the A since the 2008-09 season.

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