Archive for November, 2009

The Tampa Bay Lightning played an inspired but ultimately unfulfilling game of hockey on Saturday night, losing to the Dallas Stars 4-3 in OT. The game looked over for most of the third period, but then stud Steven Stamkos buried a ridiculous goal that had no room for error, and he made no error at all, burying it top shelf past Alex Auld.  47 seconds later, Jeff Halpern, who has relished finally playing on a line with skilled players (moved to the 1st line with Vinny and garbage ass Tanguay) buried a tough backhand shot past Alex Auld to tie [...]

Sorry, I was kind of in the Christmas spirit there, and its not freaking Santa that is coming into town, its the Tampa Bay Lightning. After making it through a tough road trip with more wins than losses, the Lightning finished off a brief homestand 2 and 0 over the Thanksgiving holiday. Last nights game was a real ass whopping as we demolished the Rangers 5-1.  This Steven Stamkos guy (Barry Melrose has never heard of him) scored his 16th goal of the season and was joined in the goal scoring by Steve Downie and two from the new LW [...]

While sitting, well mostly standing, and watching my Bolts lose yet another Shootout to the Las Angeles Kings, I decided that I would write about the things that I like and dislike about this season so far. So here goes… LIKE: Right off the bat, you have to like the play of Mr. 40 goals Steven Stamkos. My brother and I predicted that he would score 40+ goals this season, and he is already off to a blistering start with his 13 goals, which ties him for 2nd in the NHL. He is 18th overall in the points race right now. [...]

Last night the Tampa Bay Lightning snapped the four game OT loss slide, by winning in OT against the Leafs 2-1. Vinny Lecavalier and Ryan Malone had the 2 goals for our squad, which was enough to squeak by the slumping Leafs. According to the Twitter account of our General Managers wife, there was not an empty seat in the house, which is far from what the Bolts see at home games.  The real story of the night is the Phil Kessel played his first game of the season for Toronto last night. Mr. Mattias Ohlund brought him a present [...]

Tonight the Bolts lost to the Philadelphia Flyers in a 6 to 2 rout. If you watch the highlights from tonights game, you will see that it wasn’t all poor goal tending that got us into this mess. Our defense didn’t do much to help in the way of stopping some of the best goal scorers in the league from putting on a clinic. Earlier today I spent 10 minutes with a friend debating how good of a goalie I think Mike Smith is, and could be. My friend is the kind of hockey fan that screams “SHOOT!!” when our team is [...]

In what is becoming a really alarming oddity, the Lightning lost last night 2-1 in a shootout, their 4th shootout loss this season.  If you combine that with the fact that we had the most shootout losses last year, and an alarming trend starts to surface. Besides being outshot by a hefty margin, 38 to 19, the Bolts played real solid hockey last night.  We passed the puck and entered the zone well against a team that doesn’t allow teams to enter their own zone with ease. Victor Hedman, although one of only 4 players with a – rating for [...]