Martin St. Louis is heading to Montreal for the All Star Game as a replacement for Sidney Crosby. The former HART Trophy winner and current leading scorer for the Lightning joins Vincent Lecavalier as Lightning representation in the game (Steven Stamkos will be playing in the Young Stars game).

You needed to only look at the banter on the bench before Vincent Lecavalier took his penalty shot on Thursday night.

You only had to feel the electricity in the building. The fans on the edge of their seat.

This was the captain going in. This was the franchise going one on one. And you damned well better have seen the reaction from the fans and the bench when he slipped it through.

If you can’t market that, you shouldn’t be in the business. If you can’t find the value in that – you shouldn’t be a player in the game of running a pro sports franchise.

The Lightning returned home tonight to face the rival Flyers and what was accomplished on ice was nothing short of the fantastic. It was the type of effort the Lightning have only shown a handful of times all season: peppering the Flyers with shots, contributions from all. 4-1 final. Check with Cassie at Boltsblog.net for the Recap.

(last updated January 16th, 2009 @ 4:12 PM EST)

Sports columnist Gary Shelton at the St. Petersburg Times says in eloquence the point worth remembering (for Lightning fans) with the Lecavalier tradewind/storm that has swept up:

It is as simple as this. Fans trust Vinny Lecavalier a great deal, and they don’t trust the new ownership at all.

Around here, Lecavalier is not only the face of a franchise, he is the faith. In the chaos of a season, he is the reason to keep watching.

He is the reason to think things might eventually get good again.

That, in essence, is the point in fan outcry against this supposed trade talk. It’s not a foreign subject for Lightning fans to see high quality players sent packing during down years in order to try to improve the roster. Yet in those down years, it was usually a marginal fan favorite sent away for a long term investment (or a short sighted solution) in return.

And OK Hockey has been all about the short-sighted solution sus-far, or so it seems. Lets secure Dan Boyle… Wouldn’t it be cooler if we traded him though? Lets bring in Barry Melrose and jazz up management and… oh, wait, he hasn’t coached in a decade and look at the monstrosity of incapability he is displaying…

A Lecavalier trade, to me, would be comparable to sending Mario Lemieux packing from the Pittsburgh Penguins instead of Jaromir Jagr in the July 2001 trade… The face of the franchise, the figurehead… hell, the team owner for Christ sake. Mario had saved the franchise when he was drafted. He won Stanley Cups with the Pens, he literally saved hockey in Pittsburgh again by purchasing the Pens…

Some would say Lecavalier joining the Lightning (along with so many other cogs that have come and gone since 2004) accomplished the same in Tampa Bay. A perennial loser became a contender on his watch, and a champion on his watch. A derelict franchise was rebuilt and renewed with thanks to the hope and faith that Vincent brings to roster day in and day out.

For the last ten seasons, there has been a constant dogging Tampa Bay Lightning hockey. Through the tortured days of the late 1990’s through a Stanley Cup championship and back again to the dregs of mediocrity, one chorus has sung itself silly every season. Every season with or without basis.

Vincent Lecavalier to Montreal.

There was the disrespect factor to begin, as Vinny entered the NHL in a non traditional market. Tampa Bay was the joke of the league and of course, fans from Canada treated the Lightning as the joke they were while making up all sorts of preposterous trade scenarios for Vincent’s services.

As the lean years of Lightning hockey pressed on, some of those rumors weren’t based off desire to mock Tampa as so much save Vincent from the lowest of low rungs of the NHL. “He deserves better than that” were the sympathies being sent to the player (but of course, not the hockey fans suffering in Tampa Bay. After all, it’s a non traditional market. Who could care?).

Even with the Lightning on the up and up in 2002-2004, ventures to Canada in December resulted in the same rumors year after year: Lecavalier wants out, Lecavalier’s not happy.

That’s why I don’t get too concerned about Vincent-Lecavalier-to-Montreal rumors that have sprung up today. Vinny-for-Garbage-because-he’s-our-favorite-francophone; the cliché offerings of mediocrity that are supposed to seem all worldly.

Oh, don’t get me wrong — I am concerned about Vincent Lecavalier trade rumors in general right now as I lack faith in OK Hockey to make moves that make sense. Keeping the core intact and building around them imperative. But as I noted earlier today in a post, volatility has ruled the first half of the Lightning season.

And I’ll say this as bluntly and openly as I can and hope to high hell someone with management and ownership actually reads this blog: If you guys seriously want to fuck up your investment in this franchise, trade Lecavalier. If you’re more concerned about how happy you are with the club’s makeup than how well you’re drawing at the arena — by all means, trade him for shit being rumored and continue on your directionless trek through the NHL.

It never fails that the Vinny-to-Montreal rumors surface… But the dealings of OK Hockey make me weary that something may happen that ruins the fragile stability that currently resides with this team. And the only thing worse than this would be to wreak havok on the stability of the Tampa Bay Lightning franchise in general by making a move with Vincent.

If I had to find a word for the Lightning under Barry Melrose’s tenure as coach, I think the word would be disjointed.

The lack of cohesion was apparent, the lack of passion on the ice… and drive to actually play the game. To enjoy the game. It felt like, from a fan perspective, a much hyped package that just could not deliver anywhere close to the promise that was proposed to the fanbase.

The stigma of the roster anarchy will continue to haunt ownership and Brian Lawton for the rest of the season (if not beyond that) unless a clear sense of direction of what the Lightning franchise wants in players is found.

But what a difference a few games make.

It started with Colorado, and I noted that it was the start of a new season for the Lightning where Rick Tocchet had worked with players during their scheduled time off. The Colorado game results and the lack-of-effort in Atlanta didn’t do as much harm as once was thought… Through the negatives and adversity, it looks like the Lightning have found… well, the Lightning.

Maybe I am speaking too soon on this, but the teamt hat I have watched versus the Penguins and Panthers the past week has not been the same club I’ve watched otehr times this season. There is a drive again, there is a cohesion… There’s emotion and passion…

And there’s a clear desire to win.

Things are not all gravy, don’t get me wrong. Thsi team is not suddenly a bunch of world beaters… But as I watch the closing minutes of this Lightning vs. Panthers matchup at Times Palace, the Lightning are playing like sharks when there is blood in the water. A far cry from the comparisons to the days of Steve Ludzik.

Tocchet’s talks, the return of Jeff Halpern, Jussi Jokinen’s “wakeup call”, Evgeny Artyukhin actually playing like he’s on the North American continent once again… Mike Smith being stellar between the pipes, the return of Ryan Malone… It’s all had a profound effect on this club.

Now will it last?

6-4 the final at Times Palace, the Lightning beat the Panthers for the 2nd straight day. Vincent Lecavalier had two goals, Martin St. Louis, Ryan Malone, Steven Stamkos and “Artoo” Artyukhin also contributed to scoring. An outstanding effort for a 2nd-game-in-24-hours matchup.

With 11 games until the season midway point, the main news out of Tampa this week was… training camp. Yes, training camp… Coach Rick Tocchet ran the nag that has been the Lightning roster (under performing, non-cohesive and soft) until they dropped.

Quite a difference to what Ryan Malone experienced back in September under Barry Melrose:

“I wasn’t sure how different camps went. We scrimmaged a couple times and then we left, really,” he said of the fall. “It wasn’t much structure and all the other stuff you’re supposed to be learning.”

It would seem Rick is trying to get his house in order and that’s all fine and good. In fact my above remark about “riding that nag…until it dropped” is misquoting and mischaracterizing — this wasn’t a mid-season Camp Torturella — but he still ran the team and ran them hard which is a stark contrast to the laissez faire approach of September’s camp and European Vacation under the Mullet.

Rick also met with Vinny Lecavalier after Tuesday’s practice to talk about the team, leadership and on-ice play. And Vinny’s on board with everything.

The question is, what type of results will we see from this tonight versus the Avs? A more alert team? Or one that is tuckered out from being overworked during their time off the last few days?

Quick sidenotes:

• Gary Roberts will hang them up after this season.
• Kari Ramo has been called up and will serve as backup to Mike Smith tonight due to an injury to Ollie the Goalie
• Ryan Malone and Jeff Halpren return to the lineup tonight
• Tonight’s telecast is in High Definition…

Mike Chen can’t look away at the train wreck here in Tampa, and who can blame him? Ooh, blame… Good subject for an article Mike! Have at it!

The real culprit? I can see why people can point fingers at one guy or another (though Stamkos is absolved of everything other than simply being an 18-year-old rookie learning the ways of the NHL) but when it comes down to it, everyone is at fault here from the wacky ownership duo of Len Barrie and Oren Koules to Melrose and his then-assistants to veteran leaders like team captain Vincent Lecavalier.

Yep, you’re all guilty and you should feel bad because the fan base that slowly built up from the early 2000s is now disintegrating as the team becomes one of the biggest sideshows in professional sports.

Mike goes on to break down the X’s and D’oh’s of the Lightning, post-Palace Sports, like an ESPN analyst without a bone to pick with a former employer. Blame lies from the top down, and from the bottom up. As a fan, I’ve focused on the top-down side instead of looking at the players, the lock room and the atmosphere generated by team leaders…

Just to tickle my fancy on the blame heirachy, lemme highlight the one paragraph that stands out for me:

The thing that I don’t get is that even though moviemaking (Koules) and real estate (Barrie) are completely separate businesses than running a pro-sports franchise, the basic tenants of “get good people/have a plan/work hard” are still in place. Here’s how any organization, pro sports or otherwise, should work: leadership at the top has a vision and a plan. They bring in supervisors (coaches) to create strategy for that plan, then the supervisors motivate the workers (players) to properly execute the plan with a good attitude and strong work ethic while providing feedback about what’s working and what’s not. I don’t see any of this here.

Some people really hated Palace Sports ownership… I mean, seriously despised “Dollar” Bill Davidson and outside-the-area ownership. They didn’t care for Rick Dudley or the types of players he brought in at the get-go of Palace Sports tenure of ownership.

But — this is inarguable — Davidson, Tom Wilson, Bill Campbell and the rest of Palace Sports had a plan and a vision of all facets of the operation. On ice, the venue, the administrative organization… They assigned a well-versed individual into a role and let them work.

With OK Hockey? It’s been anarchy without a general MO of the moves, without a definition of the how or why.

Mike goes on to dissect coaching and then throwing some blame the players ways… Not everyone, just the C and A’s of the team. The article is certainly worth a read and a thought or three.

In essence, it comes back to the volatility of the off season as a foreshadowing of the season so far. A new administration does indeed have a right to put who they want in positions of power… But these people need to know what the plan is, spread the plan down the chain of command and get everyone on message and in sync on that.

Right now, we’re still devoid of that vision / message from any level of command.

…which has contributed to the Bolts being run straight into the ground.

Two periods are in the books and the Lightning have looked more like… well, like the Tampa Bay Lightning that I’ve seen in the past — finesse and deftness.

Sadly, the question that stands out in my mind is “How are they going to screw it up this time?”

3-1 as it stands at the 2nd intermission. St. Louis with 2 goals (and having just missed the hat trick), Vincent Lecavalier with the other goal.

EDIT: Oh. My. God… It’s a final. The Lightning actually… They actually… Oh, lemme try to get the words out, forgive me for being challenged in this…

They actually won.

The streak ends at nine. Rick Tocchet gets win number two… The question now is, when and where will win #3 come?

A joke thread was started over at Calgary Puck over the summer. I’m partly to blame for it but not as much as the ticket rep with the Lightning who sent out the mailer in question that was reposted over on those boards:

Don’t miss out on the hottest tickets in town, since the Lightning have welcomed their new owners, there has been nothing but excitement over here at the Forum. In just one week we have added Power forwards Ryan Malone, Radim Vrbata and Gary Roberts. We have also drafted rookie phenom Steve Stamkos and signed Goalie Olaf Kolzig. This team has gone from being in the basement of the NHL to one the best teams in the league, and maybe one of the best teams in NHL history!! Now is the time to come on board in our luxury seating areas.

…

Emphasis added by me and the remainder of the ticket offerings snipped.

Now, we’re 2 games into the 2008-09 season but is a 19 shot effort at all living up to the hype that this ticket rep put out? How about the 21 shot effort the day before, where Vincent Lecavalier was the only player able to put up more than a pair of shots on goal?

Right now, that ticket rep email looks even more like a joke to me. Maybe that’ll change after Saturday’s game versus the Hurricanes back in North America? Or perhaps we’ve been introduced to what will be one of the longest seasons for TB fans since the late 1990’s?

I don’t know how far and wide this has carried since I saw it first mentioned in a St. Petersburg Tiems article last week, but Vincent Lecavalier wants to stay in Tampa. That isn’t news (though our friends in the province of Quebec would tell us otherwise)

What is news is Kent Hughes telling the world it’s not a short term deal. It’s a long one. To paraphrase: rest of his career.

And nwo Erik Erlendsson at the Tribune gets a money quote from Vincent:

Despite a pending change in ownership and a certain change in head coaches, Lecavalier said he intends to discuss signing a long-term deal that could keep him with Tampa Bay his entire career.

“I want to. I just think they want to wait to be officially in charge before we talk about it,” Lecavalier said Tuesday. “I’m looking forward to the new owners. They have a passion for the game. Oren Koules and Len Barrie have played the game. I’m encouraged about the new owners, and I’m excited about things.”

There’s no time line. There’s only the talk…

And right now I am still wondering what to make of the direction of the Lightning, as they transition to OK hockey from Palace Sports.

I watched parts of the Lightning game last night… Parts. Oddly it was always the parts where the Lightning stood around and couldn’t move the puck up ice. They played a poor mans dump-and-chase and had no desire to do much more than give the Capitals what amounted to even-strength power play opportunities.

John Tortorella is pissed and wants “no excuses” for the loss. Of course, he wouldn’t flat out call his team pathetic or inept… But that’s exactly how they are playing. There’s a lack of passion once you get below Lecavalier, St. Louis, Richards and Prospal. Jan Hlavac is doing so poorly he’s been demoted to the fourth line (note to my friend Jes Golbez — it appears you were right when you scorned the addition of Hlavac this summer).

I feel flat out sorry for Karri Ramo who has played his ass off the last few games. Here’s a 21 year old goaltender standing toe-to-toe with one of the NHL’s elite netminders in Olaf Kolzig and what’s happening? His team gives up in front of him.

Read that again: his team gives up in front of him.

That’s the only way to term last night. They flat out gave up. I won’t say that everyone on ice didn’t try or put an effort out there. They did, however, fail to look like they were competing in the end. And the lame duck season will continue unless the ownership situation solidifies soon (meaning don’t expect cavalry to swoop in via a trade or management change any time soon).

Meanwhile, Caps land is rejoicing a new found glory in their new coach… Oh, and the win. RJ can find two positives — and only two and that’s not surprising. Ramo, Lecavalier, and then suckage… that was last night.

One night, just one night…

But I will say this, if the team didn’t rally around Karri Ramo near the end — when they couldn’t rally any other way — this game was a lost cause. Likewise, if Ramo hadn’t played above what we in Tampa had been seeing the last few games, this would have easily been a Toronto win with a 3+ goal advantage in the end for the Leafs.

Vincent Lecavalier scores with 41 seconds left in regulation to lift the Bolts to a 2-1 win. Karri Ramo stops 31 shots in his season debut.

Greg Wyshynski over at AOL’s FanHouse alerted me to this, uh, video…

I’ll let Greg do the talking and then let Courtney the Hockey Fan further do the, um,talking?

Lately a lot of people have been jumping to this site from Google’s Image Search, trying to find Lightning Championship wallpaper…

Of course, I am letting them down because I only have a large image of the Southeastern Division Championship desktop wallpaper on the site.

So let me see what I can do? I can give you guys links to other sites or perchance design an image of my own? We’ll see if I can do the latter in the future but in the meantime — I’m scanning the web trying to find Lightning wallpaper from the championship:

The St. Petersburg Times offers in-game photos as Wallpaper for your desktop

Tampa Bay LIghtning Entertainment hosts two Desktop images of the Lightning Ice Girls

Mccanner.com offers several different wallpapers for you.

I found the following two wallpapers online at one point or another:

Here’s the 2003-04 playoffs from the CBC for you to love as your own:

For all the Vincent Lecavalier fans, here’s another one I found on the web:

Bolted Down provides the following Wallpaper for users:

And Boltsmag offers you these wallpaper images:

Big thanks go out to reader Joshua Bernard who sent in this desktop wallpaper image to Boltsmag:

Just click on either image to get a bigger size version, then right click and select SET AS WALLPAPER or SAVE AS…

If you have a lead to Lightning desktop wallpaper — post a link on the comments or email me

Update: December 20th, 2007: Everything SEEMS to be working now. I would appreciate it if anyone experiencing problems (ie not seeing all the graphics) would email me or post a comment and let me know