Archive for September 13th, 2005

Rookies Revialed

Tuesday, September 13th, 2005

Jay Feaster has always preached chemistry, the locker room, chemistry, the locker room and all that jazz. There is a balance between the players that are playing for the Lightning and to unsway that balance is to make life difficult for yourself.

Enter the minor leaguers, prospects and draft picks who were invited to camp this year…

Then factor in their introduction to Camp Tortorella and the dissatisfaction of Day One at the Ice Sports Forum and you have to figure it may be a very cold shoulder earned from both the coach and the locker room, and then a demotion back to the minors.

Names singled out - and this is notable because the biggest opportunity on the roster — were defensive prospects Gerard Dicaire and Andy Rogers, both of whom had positive showings at Traverse City last week.

Camp Tortorella

Tuesday, September 13th, 2005

Welcome Tampa Bay Lightning players to Camp Tortorella! Where breakfast is optional because you are likely to lose it before lunch!

Today is the day trainers have garbage cans on the bench in case anyone throws up. And someone will after skating three sets of 15 laps.

Eat your heart out, Club Med!

In other camp news — for those of you who haven’t seen captain Dave Andreychuk since he was running around with a large metal chalice above his head, he’s sporting shoulder length locks.

The Times also reports today that Brad Richards is not at 100 percent after abdominal surgery… Scar tissue is giving him some pain. In a part of this story that I wasn’t aware of - Richards actually sustained the injury during the Cup run in 2003-04 and played through it.

One thing’s most likely certain this season and it may be helped along by Tortorella’s intensive camp (and Coach T is concerned about this as much as this blogger) - there is almost no way the Lightning repeat their mostly-injury-free season like in 2003-04 and that is going to make it difficult with a tight cap situation as is.

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