Gotta keep this short (bad storm in the area with lots of lightning), but will give more later: Corey Sarich has been re-signed at 1.9 million dollars.

EDIT 4:19 PM Ok so some bad storms were hanging over my neighborhood and didn’t relent until just a few minutes ago.

Sarich’s deal is only for a year and avoids arbitration (the hearing was scheduled for Monday). Sarich is the last blue-line member that needed to be resigned and that was achieved. The question now focuses on the jumble at the blue line.. The Bolts dealt one of their top four defensivemen earlier this month (Sydor), signed a top four (Kuba), lost a top 4 to Free Agency (Kubina). The team needs someone to step up yet again on defense and Sarich and most likely Paul Ranger will get opportunities to do so.

There are more questions out there about the defense and about the team but for the moment I will leave them be.

As you guys have seen by my lack of posting, I’ve been really out of it (actually working a bit) and my focus has been off. Apologies.

There’s one thing that gets me more than anything when it comes to the Buccaneers — it’s their need to be excessive with money and then jack up ticket prices to compensate.

Oh no, I’m not harping on the Glazer’s control of Manchester United right now (though I’m unaware of what the Glazers have been doing to the Manchester faithful besides contemplating how to destroy renovate Old Trafford…

I’m talking about the Glazer’s secrecy and extravagance in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers new practice facility. The Tampa Bay Business Journal has more:

Among the more significant changes were to the Bucs’ locker room, which was originally finished in black but was replaced with wood grain when someone remarked that it looked like it belonged to the Oakland Raiders.

Executive VP Ed Glazer’s private bathroom is being outfitted with enough marble that it will ultimately cost as much as most people’s cars.

…It’s always just those little things that hamper construction, isn’t it? I mean if it’s not a gold plated low-flow toilet, it has got to be contractors offering stone other than marble to finish your bathroom…

GM Bruce Allen and Head Coach Jon Gruden also will have second-story offices with a view of the practice fields and stadium, though the best corner office in the building is actually being reserved as a conference room for hosting NFL officials and other executives.

Gruden’s office, on the building’s other corner, is configured so that even his private shower has a view of the practice fields.

OK, that last one is just disturbing. But we all know Jon — football excessive to the very core. Understandable (for him) but just a little too much for the sane.

Of course, this new headquarters/training facility is just a bit of an upgrade from the Buccaneers current/soon-to-be-former facility. Nicknamed “the Woodshed”, One Buccaneer Place was outdated the day it opened in 1976 and has been derided by players and personel for the 3 decades the team has called it home. I’ll leave the stories about that alone for now… That could take up it’s own post (or entire blog — if only the facility was going to be around much longer).

No word yet how much the Bucs plan to raise ticket prices to underwrite the extra exuberance (or how they’ll justify it this time around).

Step right up and witness the 2006-07 Tampa Bay Lightning schedule!

The Bolts have signed 19-year NHL veteran Luke Richardson to a 1 year, 500 thousand dollar contract. This attempts to solidify the blue line with an experienced NHl defensiveman and puts a bit of a damper on the idea that prospects such as Andy Rogers, Mike Egener, Matt Smaby and others would get a shot at the Lightning roster.

…well, that is, if you believe Richardson is a lock to make the team.

Ingmar Berman holds a fondness for Rick Dudley. Behold this doorway to the past.

He’s much reviled, he’s much ridiculed and yet he was the major architech of the Lightning’s championship roster. Love him or hate him, Rick Dudley is the Natural Man.

1 year, $1.65 Million…

I don’t know how long it’s been in place — I only first noticed it on Draft Day — but the Tampa Bay Lightning have added an RSS Feed to their web site.

…the only problem is that it “updates” by displaying the exact same stories over again as if it were breaking news. And when there IS breaking news, the RSS links from the Lightning web site lead to blank pages with nothing at all.

Back to the drawing board, boys…

Marc Denis signed a 3 year, $8.6 million deal.

A contract for a bonafide starting goalie that averages less than 3 millin dollar a year? Nice. Now all he has to do is survive Camp Torturella and live up to the expectations that are being thrust upon him…

Interesting little anecdote from tonight’s Devil Rays/Boston Red Sox game:

Scott Kazmir dominated in a way no one could have expected tonight — oh, except his fans and anyone who has seen Scott Kazmir pitch. He notched 10 K’s and that set off an announcement on TV that you could sign up on Kanesstrikeout.com and get a free Papa John’s pizza.

The site was immediately inundated and basically shut down due to heavy server load. After 3 or so tries, the site came back up very slowly with a long load time. Those who DID sign up were told the Rays did NOT get 10 strikeouts today and blah-blah-blah. If you refreshed the form page and tried again, you would be told that you had already printed out a coupon today and could print out no more.

I don’t hold this against the Devil Rays marketing staff as-so-much Kane’s Furniture, who’s own marketing staff was sponsoring this campaign and running the web site. It wasn’t prepared for this and not set up to handle things either.

During the 2004-05 campaign — some people had a hard time seeing #5 out on ice. The had a hard time becuase they associated the number with former long-time Tampa defensiveman Jassen Cullimore, and the body under the #5 sweater was clearly not Jassen Cullimore.

They had problems because one of the usually suspects out on ice when a goal was given up, or a flippant mistake was made on defense, was #5. Daryl Sydor came to the Lightning to add defensive talent as well as playoff experience to the defensive corpse in 2004, and now his time in Tampa is over.

Having to make cap space for RFA signings, Jay Feaster dealt Daryl Sydor to the Dallas Stars on Sunday for a 4th round draft pick. It does leave a hole in the defensive squad, but it was a move that had to happen for (as already mentioned) financial reasons as well as play.

Jay Feaster told the St. Petersburg Times this morning that he was through dealing besides minor moves here and there and I believe him (though another salary dump is not out of the question — with Vaclav Prospal being the likely target). I believe this gives defensive prospects such as Mike Egener, Andy Rogers, Matt Smaby and others more hope if they plan to crack the Lightning roster in the pre-season.

I called it a night early last night after a whirlwind couple of days personally… So I totally missed news of the signing of Filip Kuba to a 3 year, nine million dollar contract…

he gem of Saturday’s acquisitions was Kuba, 29, who signed a three-year, $9 million contract. Like Kubina, Kuba is a native of the Czech Republic who played for the bronze-medal winning Olympic team.

Kuba (6-foot-3, 205 pounds) has compiled 139 points (34 goals) in 375 NHL games. He scored six goals and had 19 assists in 65 games with Minnesota this season, leading it in average ice time (21:46).

“We think that bringing him into our system, he can post even bigger numbers,” Feaster said. “For us, this is a complete, two-way defenseman, and at a price that when you look at what happened in the market today with defensemen, that’s very affordable.”

But beware, Lightning fans…

Feaster said the moves made by the Lightning during the past few days have nudged them “tight against” the $44 million salary cap, taking into account the six restricted free agents (Denis, Dmitry Afanasenkov, Evgeny Artyukhin, Ryan Craig, Ruslan Fedotenko, Cory Sarich) still to be signed.

Nikita Alexeev is coming back to Tampa Bay.

That’s right, 24 hours after the Lightning’s marquee left-wing went bye-bye to Columbus for Marc Denis, the Bolts signed this former heir-apparent to Fredrik Modin’s throne.

Who fills the void? Will Nikita Alexeev be brought back to get another chance to forefill his potential that he has failed to do time and again?

Like I said, you could see this coming too… As I did yesterday.

Nikita has been out of the NHL the last two seasons — spending most of 2003-04 at the AHL level and recovering from surgery. 2005-06 saw Alexeev in Russia and shut-out from the Bolts.

He is much like Dmitry Afanasenkov where his abilities have not been fully tapped. Unlike Alexeev, though, Dmitry has been able to contribute to the Lightning while Nikita has simply had to bide his time.

UPDATE 4:46 PM EDT: Well, continuing on the “You could see this coming” subject heading, Pavel Kubina has signed a four year, 20 Million Dollar contract with the Maple Leafs of Toronto. The fast and furious first day of free agency has been overwhelming. (Chara to Boston, Jovanovski with the Coyotes, etc). You can find more information about Kubina’s signing from TSN.ca’s article (the above link is from the Tribune story about Alexeev/Kubina).