Andy Rogers has signed his entry contract, but has been re-assigned to his Junior hockey club.

That means for all inherit purposes Timo Hebling is the teams #6 defensiveman - for now. Teams are making final cuts and roster preparations for opening night, though, and someone may be claimed before Wednesday night. Stay tuned.

The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Jay Feaster and the Lightning hadn’t even wanted to play in Sunrise yesterday and had been trying to have the game canceled or re-scheduled (with the help of other Southeast division opponents who were willing to help by re-scheduling themselves). Alas, the Panthers were not plannign to accomodate the Lightning at any rate:

“As far as I’m concerned this is the last time we’ll play here,” general manager Jay Feaster said.

When Sunday’s game was scheduled over the summer, the Lightning was under the impression the regular season would open Saturday. Instead, the regular season begins Wednesday. Feaster said he never would have scheduled a preseason game four days before the season opener.

In the NHL, teams - not the league - schedule preseason games.

Feaster asked the Panthers and general manager Mike Keenan to either move the game or cancel it, but the Panthers refused.

“We moved heaven, earth, mountains and major bodies of water to try to find any way to not have to play (Sunday),” Feaster said, “and there was no cooperation whatsoever by their general manager.”

Iron Mike Keenan strikes again…

Eight more meetings this year — two in the next week for that matter which may mean that you will see fireworks during the October 7th and 8th matchups between the two squads.

Some of you are well aware the NHL Network is offering a free preview for the next month on satellite systems and various cable networks. One network that is not going to be as part of the trial will be local Bright House Networks cable service:

The NHL Network is a channel our marketing department is looking into but in order to add new channels there are extensive negotiations and contracts to go over.

Unfortunately we do not have immediate plans or a timeframe to offer this network on our channel lineup. We continually review our channel lineup to be sure we provide a wide array of diverse programming. From time to time, we do make changes.

This from “Paul” — Customer Service rep for Bright House.