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Quick Strikes: the Tampa Bay Lightning John Tavares legend is growing

In other news, it’s time to give women a fair shake in hockey, and what’s going on with the Olympics?

The Bolts

Tampa Bay Lightning fans are running with Elliotte Friedman’s Thought that John Tavares would look great in blue and white. Yesterday, GeoFitz4 looked at how much it would cost to sign (or trade for) New York Islanders captain John Tavares and whether it’s a feasible move for the Bolts. “The biggest challenge is obviously the salary cap. While there are less challenges facing the Lightning with the salary cap in 2018-19 when Tavares would be signing, the summer following will be an amazingly hard challenge.” [Raw Charge]

The fine people at Hockey Buzz are doing a series called the “25 Greatest Scorers in Lightning History”. Yesterday, they ranked Pavel Kubina at 25, and today at 24 they have another big, strong, European defenseman. Go check it out! [HockeyBuzz]

Top 25 Under 25

#12: Jake Dotchin was a player that really grew at the NHL level, according to Lightning coach Jon Cooper. the 2012 6th round pick will be looking to take that momentum and run with it. “Dotchin was only expected to be with Tampa for a short time. However, his grit and skill impressed so much that he ended up playing with the Lightning for the remainder of their regular season. He eventually worked his way up to the first pairing alongside Victor Hedman.” [Raw Charge]

#13: Taylor Raddysh exploded on the scoresheet for Erie -- "Raddysh may get a long look at training camp this year, but it is almost a certainty that he is returned to Erie this season. He still needs to work on his skating ability, but that should be no problem for Barb Underhill of the Lightning’s staff. She was the master who helped Brayden Point fix that aspect of his game, allowing him to jump straight from juniors to the NHL." [Raw Charge]

#14: Mathieu Joseph will be starting his pro career with the AHL Syracuse Crunch after a great junior career that included a U20 World Junior Championships silver medal for Canada, and back to back seasons where he was better than a point per game. “With Joseph’s offense taking such great strides the past two seasons, his future is looking a bit higher than it was when he was drafted. He was viewed as being a potential third line, energy winger that played a pretty smart two-way game at the time.” [Raw Charge]

The Game

There was a conversation about female reporters, bloggers and team employees on Twitter yesterday. It pointed out the fact that a lot of groups that cover the game employ men in a very disproportionate way (a lot of times not on purpose). Sarah Hall over at Five For Howling wrote a very lovely piece on why that needs to change. “Women are reporters. Women are bloggers. Women can scout and, sometimes, women know more about a subject than any other person in their office or site. The ‘Old Boys Club’ of hockey is starting to take a shift. More women, young women, are wanting to start covering sports. It’s time for the media to start changing.” [Five For Howling]

Players on AHL only contracts will be allowed to go to the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. “[American Hockey League] President and CEO David Andrews confirmed through a league spokesman Wednesday that teams were informed they could loan players on AHL contracts to national teams for the purposes of participating in the Pyeongchang Olympics... from Feb. 5-26” [Sportsnet]

For 12 years now Minnesota has had a Hockey Day celebrating the game. For the first time it will now include an outdoor womens game! The St. Cloud State Huskies will play host to the University of Minnesota-Duluth at Eastman Park Jan. 20, 2018. “We are thrilled that the city of St. Cloud has been selected as the site of Hockey Day Minnesota in 2018.  This event truly celebrates the sport of hockey in the state of Minnesota, and to have the opportunity to be part of Hockey Day Minnesota in St. Cloud this year is an honor for our program and University,” - Huskies women’s hockey head coach Eric Rud [Fan Rag Sports]

Hockey nerds! The Rochester Institue of Technology Hockey Analytics Conference (RITHAC) is back! This year it will be on Saturday October 21st, 2017. More details in the tweet below:

WWYD? I’d love to hear your answers in the comments!

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