Upon a little further research on William Houston’s article in the Globe And Mail with regards to a quote that was made by a “Tampa Radio Host” (Steve Demuig, it turns out. No shock there)…

It turns out the quote itself was pieced together and CHANGED by Houston to encompass ALL of Canada when Demuig’s comment was pointed towards one group alone, the Toronto Maple Leafs. This remark came after the Lightning beat the Leafs in Tampa, in reference to all the Maple Leaf fans that show up at the St. Pete Times Forum.

Agreeing with the remark or not, Houston has put a bullseye on Tampa not just from at good contingent of Canada. A fabricated statement which erases any credibility that Mr. Houston had.

Amid the first loss in weeks by the Bolts, while the NHL pundits are still oohing and ahhing over the Lightning and while the St. Pete Times can at least find time to get quotes from Gordie Howe and Chico Resch with regards to if the Lightning have what it takes to make a run for the cup, the Tampa Tribune found itself lost in a sea of NCAA coverage and…

…can’t post a single article or news brief about the Lightning in Monday’s edition of the Trib.

The Tribune can whine about not wanting to cover a team that plays in an arena that is named for it’s competitor. It can (and will) tell you that the Tribune needs to focus on what the readers want… But the Tribune also has a sick habit of finding preference for out-of-town news items for out-of-town sport teams.

None of them hockey teams. The Tribune continues to be run as a Good ole’ Boy” southern newspaper and an example of why the NHL has trouble existing in the south: lack of coverage and presumed lack of interest.

The Globe and Mail quotes a Tampa Radio host (name withheld by them) as saying the following:

“All we can hope for is Tampa Bay winning the Stanley Cup, the league shutting down next year,” a radio host in Tampa said this week, “and Canadians going to hell.”

I’m deeply interested in finding out who’s guilty of this remark or what the truth is behind it (the source)…

It had to happen sometime… And tonight was the night in an ugly drubbing.

The Lightning, after 2 weeks of an intense schedule, get a couple of days off to rest up and heal before Tuesday’s game against the Isles… Unfortunately this 3 day off period will be the bulk of the time off during the last weeks of March. A two week schedule has the Bolts playing every other day in most cases - with one more back-to-back game still to come.

Since the Todd Bertuzzi incident, many American “journalists” - the vast majority of which probably havent seen a game in their lives - have been chiming in on the game of hockey, its violence, and trashing the sport we all love for supposedly condoning Bertuzzi’s actions.

Most dont realize that Bertuzzi’s hit on Steve Moore was so far beyond the boundaries of the game of hockey that he has been almost universally villified within hockey circles as well.

But why consider that when there is sensationalist dogma to be had? The most revolting in a long list of bad articles on this incident was written by ESPN’s Jim Kelly, who felt that it was easier to blame Canada for Bertuzzi’s sucker punch rather than Todd Bertuzzi himself. This is my open letter response to Kelly:

======================

Mr. Kelly,

I, like many other Canadians, am writing in response to your outrageous column blaming Bertuzzi’s actions on Canadian hockey culture.

Normally, I find you to be a decent writer, but your logic in this piece is so poor it almost qualifies as slander.

While you are correct in stating that we embrace the physical style of play, you do Canadians, hockey, and the ignorant people who believe what you say - no matter how fabricated - a great disservice by trying to link Bertuzzi’s actions with “pysical play.”

Bertuzzi’s act is not sanctioned, condoned, or accepted by ANY code - written or unwritten - in hockey, or in life in general. To suggest otherwise is is assinine.

In your last paragraph, you wrote: “If Bertuzzi’s actions hadn’t fractured vertebrae in Moore’s neck, he’d have been an honored man in his locker room, the city of Vancouver and across all of Canada. Even now his apologists talk more about “poor Todd” than they do of the injured Moore.”

The flaws in this statement alone are staggering.

First, I doubt any Canadian who exists outside of your delusional fantasies have ever considered Matt Johnson, Marty McSorely or Jeff Kugel as heroes for acting like ridiculous cowards.

If you talk to real Canadians (do you know any real Canadians?), most consider those three players (as examples) to be the lowest order of scum for their actions. As far as most Canadians are concerned, we believe that Bertuzzi has joined them in this innermost ring of hockey hell.

And yes, there are apologists for Bertuzzi. Some of them happen to be Canadian. To use that as a means of painting all Canadians with the same brush is insulting. Some Americans defend Ty Cobb’s actions during his life and carreer to this day. Can I use this to paint all Americans as violent racists? Somehow, I think you would object to that characterization.

Speaking of Ty Cobb, where to beanballs, bench clearing brawls, and guys going into bases with their spikes up fit into your “this kind of activity isnt tolerated in the other major sports” argument?

The ironic thing about your article is that you yourself have become an apologist for Bertuzzi. You are trying to place the blame everywhere but where it belongs. You want to blame the league, Canada, and hockey culture.

Perhaps you should blame the one who deserves it? Todd Bertuzzi himself.

Afterall, thousands upon thousands of people have grown up in Canada, within our hockey culture, yet managed to not seriously injure an opponent through such a heinous act. I think you owe them, and us, an apology.

Sincerely,
Keith Short

Finally, after days of silence, Eric Erlendsson at the Tribune finally breaks the media silence of Craig Adams slashing attack on Tim Taylor in the final minutes of Tampa’s victory over Carolina.

Oh sure, the play was replayed on ESPN but doing a search on Google yesterday brought nothing from the online media with regards to the incident. This is the reason why the Todd Bertuzzi suspension is sickening — it’s not supposed to be for what happened because of the attack, but the attack itself. Too many guys are getting away with cheap shots, clutching and grabbing and worse on ice, and league officials are scared to show any type of policing.

Get rid of the instigator, will you? Let enforcers take care of these cheap shot artists and give a firm, “Don’t mess with my team-mate” message to players who play like goons - as Todd Bertuzzi (and arguably Steve Moore after the Naslund hit that gained him such revilement from Vancouver in the first place) and Craig Adams respective incidents have made them out to be,

Speaking of retaliation and revenge that spawned the Bertuzzi/Moore incident — the Bolts host the Canes on Saturday in the final meeting between the two teams.

The Lightning are playing the very best hockey of their short existence - they are 23 games over .500, they have 93 points, they are the first team to clinch a playoff berth in the East and in the 2003-04 season and they are in the running for the Presidents Trophy…

No, this post is not to gloat, ladies and gentlemen. This is a post made to shine some blackness on the positives of the season. The very best Lightning team still is a business question mark to owner William Davidson - sometimes refereed to by LightningNation members as “Dollar Bill”. Davidson is not sure if Hockey can survive in Tampa Bay as he and his Palace Sports and Entertainment company complain that the team has suffered 50 Million dollars worth of loses since they bought the team in 1999.

Some of you have already read that stuff in the news. Some will gloat that this is just proof that hockey in the south is a mess. This is proof - to others, but probably a minority - that owners are liars. I bring up that liar bit because Palace Sports / Davidson bought the Lightning mostly for the Ice Palace / St. Pete Times Forum and not the team - and his company has had great success with the venue while not having a very rosie tax deal with the city with regards to the arena’s value.

Can Hockey survive in Tampa Bay? When you look at Fan support — raw fan support, we’ll get into other economics in a moment — the Tampa Bay area is one of the most loyal regions for sports in America. We stuck with (and loathed) the Buccaneers during their years of sub-mediocre play from 1983 through 1996 where the team continued to draw 30 thousand in a terrible stadium and with a terrible team. The Lightning are another case of this, as the team continued to draw crowds between 8-15 thousand with the occasional sell out during 4 straight years of 50+ losses. Only hockey-mad towns such as Montreal - where the Canadians have a long history with the region - Toronto and New York could host larger crowds consistently while their team was playing abysmally. There’s also the fact that the Lightning hold the #2 regular-season attendance record (which had been the all time attendance record up until the Heritage Classic this fall in Edmonton) as well as the playoff attendance record. Fan do turn out for the Lightning, and it’s not like they are an unknown commodity to the region.

But, that goes back to economics and the game of hockey. We go back to fan support and one can bring up the vice that Tampa Bay fans dollars are stretched between the Bolts, Buccaneers and abysmal Tampa Bay Devil Rays (along with AFL’s Tampa Bay Storm and other sports pastimes throughout the Bay area that may cost money). With the NHL’s skewed economic system, seating prices that mirror top markets will not float in Tampa Bay and that is part of the reason Davidson is one of the owners stone-walling for a salary cap and other economic changed in the new CBA. In fact, this becomes a topic of all NHL teams and their viability under the economic system where player costs are currently 75 percent of team income and ticket prices are sky-high in order to regroup costs. How does the game of hockey stay relevant if fans can’t afford tickets? This isn’t an issue just with Tampa, this is an issue with every market.

Yes, Canada, that means you too. I know i have come across plenty of ultra-nationalists online that believe every American team that is south of the Mason-Dixon line should be contracted or relocated to Canada / a northern market in the US. If you did that, you would still run into the same economic problems that the league is facing now with a fan base that doesn’t expand, but laterally moves. Some of these I have come across believe that it’s a sign of weakness when a market like Tampa or Carolina or Dallas or some other city in the south is not drawing sell outs nightly. Yet from these same people’s lips, it’s ok in markets such as Boston, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Ottawa and elsewhere to not sell out nightly, or during the playoffs. Why? The logic given to me vary from how big the market is, to how long the NHL season is, to how much (!) ticket prices are. The main excuse, however, is just length of existence of those franchises. At no time could a northern team not selling out nightly, or in the playoffs for that matter, be in danger as long as they are in a northern / traditional market, even if the majority of the NHL is losing money hand over fist - including these markets. :rolleyes

Fans in the north won’t always be willing to pay outrageous ticket prices — and most hockey fans will agree they would rather not pay outrageous ticket prices for games. Ticket prices have to increase to make teams viable with cost escalation of player salaries, marketing, arena upkeep, etc, etc… Bill Davidson’s statements aren’t so much a decree that the Tampa Bay market is not viable as so much as questioning the viability of the NHL in the market in it’s current economic configuration.

What’s with the officials in tonights game between the Lightning and the Hurricanes?

This isn’t sour grapes or sour winning, but besides Dmitry Afansenkov and Marty St. Louis being manhandled all game, there is one specific incident in the closing seconds of the game that really pisses me off with how the officials pussy-footed around calling penalties.

Empty net and Affy breaks away on the lower boards — he gets tied up with one of the Canes players stick work and passes off to Tim Taylor. Taylor goes in on the empty net to score but on the way, Craig Adams gives him a blunt foul by taking a stick to his HEAD.

No call. No nothing. Yes, it was the end of the game, but nothing from the officials and it was like that most of the night at RBC Center. The Lightning were outplayed but there was a sense of desperation — “We have no hope so we desperately have to try to take these guys out” from the Canes. I’m not trying to stir things up, or trying to evade the fact physical play is part of the game - but with some of the non-calls tonight… It’s just insulting. Officials have a hard job - yeah, but they also have to be able to call penalties right in front of their eyes… If they can’t — send them home and give someone else there job.

Postscript: I thought I was the only one who saw this and thought of how malicious the attack was. Turns out that the crew hanging at Sunshine Network’s message board are full aware of it and just as pissed.

The CBC has compiled a list of top 10 Hockey violence lowlights in the wake of the Todd Bertuzzi / Steve Moore incident.

It gives you a glimpse of how the sport has “evolved” with violence — it has gone no where and the penalties have tended to be lackluster due to hero’s of the game being involved. At least that’s my take on it….

MAPLELEAFS.COM: commentators

Tampa Bay general manager proved dozens of prognosticators wrong as he made good on his word to keep netminder Nikolai Khabibulin in Tampa Bay even though he could become an unrestricted free agent next season.

Feaster made only a cursory move Tuesday, bringing back injured defenceman Stan Neckar. But Feaster took care of business early in the going, bringing in former Stanley Cup winning defenceman Darryl Sydor.

The team has been on fire since Sydor’s arrival from Columbus and along with becoming the first team to clinch a playoff berth, the Lightning are now fighting for top spot overall in the conference.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it may apply more fully to the youthful, talented Lightning than any team in the league.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…? What is he talking about? I thought we were supposed to make significant upgrades and Feaster said so! Feaster Said so!!!

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” What a concept….