The wait is over; the designation of the captaincy of the Tampa Bay Lightning has been bestowed upon Martin St. Louis. He becomes the 10th team captain in franchise history and replaces Vincent Lecavalier (who had been team captain the past five seasons and had held the team captaincy a total of 3 times twice in his career with the Bolts). St. Louis follows a line of succession that started with Dave Andreychuk. Tim Taylor, Andreychuk’s successor, served as an alternate captain under Dave, and Lecavalier had served as an alternate captain under Taylor.
Tuesday night’s invitation-only event in downtown St. Petersburg had been previously scheduled, but the unveiling of the team captaincy was attached to the shindig at the Mahaffey Theater around the onset of this year’s training camp for the Lightning.
On Monday night, Damian Cristodero had published a story online about how St. Louis and Stamkos had been lobbying for one another for the team captaincy – Stamkos urging coaching to name Marty, while Marty lobbied for Stamkos.
You can see below in a Raw Charge poll from September that the overwhelming favorite for the team captaincy was St. Louis. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a case made for Stamkos to succeed Lecavalier.
Earlier today, there had been controversy elsewhere in the league as the Buffalo Sabres named Steve Ott and Thomas Vanek co-captains, and the Edmonton Oilers went out and named not one or two but seven alternate captains (they had named Andrew Ference team captain a few days ago). Perhaps what Edmonton did was to instill confidence in its young corps of players… It still seems like they overdid it to me.
This one is a lot less arguable, debatable, or disagreeable. Congratulations to #26.
As for the alternate captains, Steven Stamkos will be aided by Nate Thompson and Matt Carle in the role. The Thompson addition seems most fitting, as the Alaskan Assassin has been renown or buying into the systems he has been askked to and doing all he can in most any role asked of him.
Who should be the next captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning?
| Martin St. Louis | 491 |
| Steven Stamkos | 149 |
| Someone else | 14 |
