Tampa Bay Lightning

The Tampa Bay Lightning have made a move today that may very well change the entire face of the Coaching Staff. The team announced earlier today that they have chosen not to retain Assistant Coach Dan Lacroix upon the expiration of his contract. Dec 23 2011; Denver, CO, USA; Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Guy Boucher (center) talks to his team as assistant coach Dan Lacroix (left) assistant coach Martin Raymond (right) listen during the first period of the game against the Colorado Avalanche at the Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports With a new (head) coach,” Lightning Vice President and General Manager Steve Yzerman said of Jon Cooper, “we’re trying to find the right fit as far as skills and experience.” ~ via Damien Cristodero at the Tampa Bay Times Dan Lacroix joined the Lightning in the summer of 2010, along with former Lightning Head Coach Guy Boucher. Lacroix was responsible for the defense and the penalty kill. The Lightning have left the door open for Lacroix to remain with the organization in some other capacity; however, at the same time, he is free to explore other coaching opportunities. At the present time, there have been no final decisions made regarding the status of Assistant Steve Thomas or Goaltending Coach Frantz Jean. Both Thomas and Jean have contracts that are due to expire at the end of June. Currently, Yzerman has said that it is his intention to bring back Goaltending Coach Frantz Jean. Lacroix’s replacement will weigh heavily on how the design of the new coaching staff will play out. There are a lot of rumors floating around the internet as to who Dan Lacroix’s replacement will be. Only time will tell which one of those rumors will turn out to be fact. One thing is for sure. With Jon Cooper being a “rookie” coach in the NHL, you can count on Yzerman looking for an Assistant Coach with a wealth of experience in the NHL. We’re contemplating a lot of things,” Yzerman said, “and what is the best fit.” ~ via Damien Cristodero at the Tampa Bay Times It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out of the course of the off season. So many things hang in the balance, all hinging off of one single decision. If the new Assistant Coach has a wealth of experience in the game, then the team may elect to stay with a two assistant format; however, in the same respect, if the new Assistant has significantly less experience, we may see the team expand to a three assistant format. With only a little over 3 months left until training camps should start, one can only assume that we will start to see these changes play out rather soon. Who do you think would be a viable decision to step into Lacroix’s position? Do you think the other coaches will remain intact, or will they be free to explore other opportunities as well? Should the other coaches remain intact? So many questions need answers. Sound off in the comments below and let us know what you think those answers should be. Be sure to stay up-to-date with all the latest Lightning news and updates with Bolts By the Bay. LIKE us on Facebook at Bolts By The Bay, and you can follow us on Twitter at @BoltsByTheBay

HOT OR NOT As if Lightning forward Nate Thompson wasn't having a good enough week as it is, coming fresh off a bronze medal victory at the IIHF World Championships, it just got a whole lot better. On Wednesday, Thompson was listed as a final...

With hockey season on hiatus until late September, several Tampa Bay Lightning personalities including Martin St. Louis and head coach Jon Cooper didn't lace up the skates for Thursday night's celebration of all that Tampa Bay sports teams have to...

By Jeremy Houghtaling Vladislav Namestnikov dipped his shoulder, turned the corner on the defenseman and drove right to the net. The Crunch forward plowed through Springfield Falcons goalie Curtis McElhinney, creating a rebound for Mark Barberio to bury less than a second later to give Syracuse a two-goal lead in the fourth game of the Eastern Conference Semifinals last week. It was Namestnikov’s first of two assists on the night, his first professional postseason points. "Not a lot of players make that play," said Syracuse coach Rob Zettler. "A lot of players go behind the net instead of going to the front of the net. He's got the courage and the speed to make those plays." For Zettler, it’s just one example of the recent development in Namestnikov’s game. "Over the last two or three weeks, his play has really elevated," Zettler said of the 20-year-old. "He's really skating well, he's battling for pucks and going to the hard areas." read more

The Lightning on Friday began what might be an extensive reworking of its coaching staff by not retaining assistant Dan Lacroix.

Oh, how fondly we all remember the summer of 2008... sure, the Tampa Bay Lightning had just stumbled to a last place finish and Cup-winning coach John Tortorella was making his way out the door, but #SeenStamkos was a thing, and wacky new owners with fashionable hairstyles were coming to Tampa Bay to make everything just super. Hooray! Welcome Oren and Len! OK Hockey is here to save the day! You may remember, as they started their crazy-guy attempt to get every NHL forward, they traded for the negotiating rights to Ryan Malone and Gary Roberts, who had just impressed us all with their gutsy playoff performances for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who had just lost in the Stanley Cup Final. Wow! These cray-cray new owners are going for it! Of course, every move wasn't golden. They decided if you had enough forwards you didn't need blueliners, and they decided Barry Melrose could still coach in this league. Sure, they were OMG awful, but what would you expect from a horror movie producer and a former NHL grinder who at that point in his life spent his time threatening to bulldoze sacred burial grounds to build golf courses? You expect... horror. The... horror... They fell apart, and the Lightning were taken away from them and given to someone who isn't nuts. And yes, Oren and Len were the worst NHL owners since His Dark Majesty Satan finally collected Toronto's Harold Ballard. But for just a little while, in that wacky summer of 2008, they let us all watch someone act out the ultimate fan fantasy. After all, haven't you ever imagined what you would do if you were suddenly an NHL owner? What kind of power-moves would you make? And so I ask the writers of Raw Charge and the broader Bolt-o-Sphere: If you were a crazy megalomaniac who owned the Lightning, who would you want to poach for the Bolts? Would you grab whoever is currently kicking bum in the playoffs? Abduct a secret crush? Don't worry about realistic trades. You're crazy! Tell us your fantasy, you nut! Clark Brooks, Raw Charge contributor: Hmm, I'm a crazy megalomaniac, specifically patterned after a certain two crazy megalomaniacs... In that case, I will have paid very close attention to how positively my existing fan base reacted to all the nostalgia during the various 20th anniversary celebrations. That means I have two names on my list: Boyle and Richards. However, since I am a crazy megalomaniac, the last thing I'm going to do is make an attempt to actually appease my fan base, so I'm not talking about Dan and Brad; I'm talking about the Rangers' Brian Boyle and Mike Richards of the Kings. Ha ha! Had you there for a minute, didn't I, Lightning fans? I'm in your heads now! Good players, yes, but I need forwards like I need more hair products, which I am going out to shop for now with the money I made from selling our trophy cases and Dave Mishkin on Craigslist. Also, I'm going after Chris Gratton and Vaclav Prospal because I miss those guys and they're overdue for yet another return to Tampa Bay. Now I am bored and this is something my coach is just going to have to figure out. Worship me as a god! (And don't forget to check out "Saw 16; Electric Boogaloo" being released direct to VHS sooner than any of us would have ever reasonably expected). Clark again, because he really got into this: Taylor Pyatt, because we've never had a pair of brothers on the Lightning before (well, we've had brothers but not brothers). I'm sure that's something that Phil and Tony Esposito could appreciate and it's worked out pretty well in Vancouver with the Sedin twins. Plus, any collector of sports memorabilia knows that having a complete set of something is worth more. Wait...there's a third brother who never played in the NHL? Eh, forget it. John Fontana, managing editor of Raw Charge: Impulsive signings by a would-be megalomaniac playing fantasy hockey with a professional sports team? How could that go wrong? I am so trading for the rights to Jarome Iginla and Jaromir

The Eastern Conference Finals of the 2013 Calder Cup Playoffs are set! After a successful 4-game sweep of the Number Two seed Springfield Falcons, the Syracuse Crunch are moving on to the Eastern Conference Finals to face the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. Mar 23, 2013; Ottawa, ON, CAN; Tampa Bay Lightning centre Tyler Johnson (63) controls the puck in the first period against the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Place. Mandatory Credit: Marc DesRosiers-USA TODAY Sports Their opponents, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, moved on to the next round just last night after defeating the Number One seed Providence Bruins in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals 5-0. Being the higher seed in the series, the Crunch will get home ice advantage in this series. The first puck of the Eastern Conference Finals will drop on Saturday, May 25th at 7:00 p.m. EST at the War Memorial Arena in Syracuse. Below is the complete schedule for the Eastern Conference Finals between the Number Three seed Syracuse Crunch and the Number Five seed Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. All times are Eastern Standard Time. Game 1 – Saturday, May 25th – Penguins at Crunch            7:00 p.m. Game 2 – Sunday, May 26th – Penguins at Crunch              7:00 p.m. Game 3 – Wednesday, May 29th – Crunch at Penguins       7:05 p.m. Game 4 – Friday, May 31st – Crunch at Penguins                 7:05 p.m. * Game 5 – Saturday, June 1st – Penguins at Crunch           7:00 p.m. * Game 6 – Monday, June 3rd – Crunch at Penguins             7:05 p.m. * Game 7 – Wednesday, June 5th – Penguins at Crunch       7:00 p.m. * Denotes if necessary We here at Bolts By The Bay wish our Tampa Bay Lightning affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch the best of luck in the Calder Cup Playoffs Eastern Conference Finals. Do you think the Crunch will be moving on to the Calder Cup Finals, or do you think the Penguins are going to put a skidding halt to the Crunch’s hot streak? How many games do you think this series is going to go? Let us know what you think in the comments below. Be sure to stay up-to-date with all the latest Lightning news and updates with Bolts By the Bay. LIKE us on Facebook at Bolts By The Bay, and you can follow us on Twitter at @BoltsByTheBay

Jon Cooper Twitter Chat Transcript

I love this game of hockey. I really do. I love the sounds of it, from bad arena music to the blare of the goal horn. I love the way the ice smells. I love being crowded into a tiny space with 17,000 or so other maniacs (and their kids) all screaming our heads off. I love the semi-controlled chaos of it all. Seriously, I love how the game can move from elegant to crude and back in a split-second. I love the feeling of being connected to millions of people from all over the world and every walk of life as a hockey fan. I love our strange, snarky sense of humor and the way we simultaneously need to invest the tiniest thing with some form of Ultimate Meaning and to strip all pretensions of ultimate-ness away and see things realistically. Hockey is a passion for me, one that I cherish. And sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I hadn't ever chosen to write about it, even as a hobby. You see, writing about the game changes the way you watch games. You start to pick things apart looking for the "in" to a story. A season can easily become a long string of analytical triggers when you're tasked with coming up with words about hockey on a regular basis. You start looking for the fault lines and the pressure points, trying to understand if this player or that one is doing okay, great, poorly, craptastic. At exactly what point do they falter? How much weight should they they bear? You start to try to link performances together in ways that aren't wholly natural. Is this a trend? How long has it been happening? How long will it continue? What is anomalous and what is "real?" Plays and players become evidence, proof of goodness or badness, rather than moments with ephemeral and complex connections. Writing about hockey requires freezing it, dismantling it, and rearranging the pieces into some new picture that isn't really hockey anymore, not as it's lived, anyway. I miss the strange kind of timelessness that watching a hockey game can be. I miss having the action roll over me in a tide, carrying me along, ready to drop me off at some unknowable point a few hours, minutes, or seconds in the future--a new place in time and in life. I miss losing my breath over what will happen next. I come to hate having to tie time down and inscribe it with meaning. I crave the potentiality of every moment leading into a million other possible moments. I think, in a way, getting involved in hockey statistics makes this sort of disconnect from the lived experience of the game starker. The stats "project," after all, is self-consciously aimed at tearing down the old narratives, ones more suited to feeling the game than thinking it. The intention behind the creation of new statistics is to break apart old assumptions about cause and effect in hockey and substitute a new "Truth," which will in its own time be deconstructed in favor of the Newest Hockey Testament. And in order to do stats, you have to come to a whole new understanding of hockey time and how it's built. Break everything down into increments of shots and attempted shots and then build upwards, stacking shots on shots on shots until you get years, seasons worth of time, and that's your new hockey experience. Games are, to one extent or another, irrelevant as blocks of time. What matters is categories of action--even strength, score tied, goalie in net. The holism of hockey, the ebb and flow and swoop of it, is too much for the statistics to handle. There is a time and a place for hockey analytics. These are excellent tools for describing certain aspects of the game that we otherwise would have no useful language for. But there are times, like right after the season ends, when analyzing it all is too much for me to handle. It's been nearly a month since the Lightning's season ended, and I've spent that month--that is, the part of it not spent on real life--simply living hockey again. I've watched NHL playoffs and AHL playoffs and World Championships. At first, it was

You've likely heard already, but if you haven't: former Tampa Bay Lightning center Brad Richards (now playing for the New York Rangers) will be a healthy scratch for tonight's Eastern Conference Semifinal matchup between the Rangers and the Boston Bruins; an elimination game where the Rangers must win. Rangers head coach John Tortorella not starting an integral member of his team with the club on the brink of playoff elimination might seem like a huge mistake, it might read as pomposity or arrogance or outright suicidal stupidity on John's part (and everyone knows gruff Tortorella is stubborn, win or lose). The thing is, he's done it before, and it nearly paid off too. Just a few miles from where the Rangers and Bruins will play tonight was where it took place; what was known as Continental Airlines Arena in the swamps of Jersey. Ten years ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning was playing game 5 of their own Eastern Conference Semifinal series against the New Jersey Devils and trailed 3 games to 1. It wasn't Brad Richards scratched from that affair, or Martin St. Louis, or Vincent Lecavalier, nor Fredrik Modin, Dave Andreychuk, Tim Taylor, Dan Boyle or Pavel Kubina. It wasn't one of the Bolts skaters who were sitting. No, it was goalie Nikolai Khabibulin who was assigned the backup role behind the guy who had backed him up most of the season, John Grahame. It didn't prevent elimination of the Lightning by the Devils, the eventual Stanley Cup Champions of 2003, but the Bolts (and Grahame especially) fought tooth and nail to stave off inevitability. That game went to overtime, that game went beyond overtime... It wasn't until 11:12 of the third overtime that Grahame faltered and the Lightning ultimately conceded the series. Grahame made 46 saves on 48 shots during that marathon, arguably playing the game of his career in the process. It was a Tortorella gamble for sure; as Khabby was the all-world netminder the Lightning had obtained in late 2001. Khabibulin was the workhorse for the club, playing in 135 of 164 games over the course of his first two full seasons in Tampa. And to have him sit out game 5? Unspeakable, unheard of. Of course he didn't like it... But it happened. And of course fans questioned John Tortorella's decision, but the team was 5-5 in the playoffs (having swept the Washington Capitals in the first round) and Khabibulin needed to raise his game (he had a .913 save percentage and 2.42 GAA in the NHL playoffs). Perhaps Tortorella's message was longer-term and not simply trying to prolong the series against the Devils; players would have to perform above and beyond in crucial situations or all was for naught. Mediocrity is unacceptable and playing it safe is death. The Lightning would heed that message next season, pushing all the way to Stanley Cup glory. Torts might not be afforded the chance to make this a long-term message (if it is one) for the Rangers roster. With an underwhelming offense during the regular and post-season, Torts is already on the hot seat among Ranger fans and possibly team execs too. This isn't an unheard of move by Tortorella though. What it does for the Rangers tonight will be determined after the puck drops at Madison Square Garden.