Lightning

Wanted: Fanfare of '95-96

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© St. Petersburg Times
published March 6, 2003

Any day now, the passion will begin to build.

Trust me on this. Any hour now, it will hit you. You will be flipping channels, daydreaming, and just like that, the juices will begin to flow. The air will crackle, the ground will shake, and the electricity will make your hair stand on end.

Any minute now, you'll start to care about the Lightning's sprint to the NHL playoffs.

Eventually, Tampa Bay will catch on. The talk will spread, the stands will fill, and the scalpers will surface. Pretty soon, the whole area will be infected with playoff fever. If memory serves, it's a lot of fun.

Yes, sir, any second now and you'll fall in love with this team all over again.

Hmmm. It wasn't that second, was it?

Or that one.

Or that one.

Give credit to the Lightning. It's difficult enough to make the kind of improvement the team has made from last season to this. It's harder to do it in secret.

Darned if the Lightning hasn't managed. Despite Wednesday's loss in Detroit the Lightning has the playoffs by the throat. This doesn't just look like a team that's made the playoffs; it looks like it plans on doing a little business once it arrives.

After road victories against the Senators and Islanders, the Lightning is 7-2-1 in its past 10 games ... and in the distance, you can hear crickets chirp. Nikolai Khabibulin has been bulletproof ... and tumbleweeds drift past. The entire team has blossomed ... and the silence is deadly.

You don't hear people talking; except for the games, you don't see people in jerseys. There are nights the St. Pete Times Forum doesn't look as much like playoff fever as it does a quarantine.

For years, Lightning fans fooled each other. Just let this team win, they said, and people will come. Just play meaningful games down the stretch, just make a playoff run, and the fun will begin.

Go back seven seasons, to the Lightning's only playoff team, and that's the way it was. In those days, most of us saw the Lightning as this charming bunch of overachievers, and their run captured all of us. In fact, seven years ago today I wrote a column about how much fun fans were having with the playoff run.

You might have expected it to happen again. By now, you might have expected the Forum to turn into a nasty, snarling pit that was going to make opponents cower. You might have expected a bandwagon or two parked out front.

There is so much familiarity with this Lightning team and that one. After 66 games, both had 73 points. Both teams got hot in midFebruary (the '96 team started a 10-1-2 streak on Feb. 14; the current one began a 7-1-1 streak on Feb. 15.)

I would argue this is a better team, more balanced, and a more cohesive locker room. It's younger, and it has more upside.

Oh, that was a good club in 1995-96, too. It was older than this one, grittier. It had players such as Brian Bradley, John Cullen, Brian Bellows, Rob Zamuner, people who were going to make opponents feel as if they had spent three hours tumbling in a dryer.

Daren Puppa's career didn't end wonderfully here, so people tend to forget how good he was most of that season. And the special teams were tremendous. The power play and the penalty killers were ranked in the top five of the league. (This year, the Lightning is 16th in the power play and 22nd in penalty killing.)

But this team is good, too, and now that Khabibulin is on his game, it's very good. Best of all, it should get better. That '95-96 team had a lot of players on their last legs. This one should be good for several seasons.

So why haven't people hopped on for the ride? This Lightning team averages 3,331 fewer fans per game than that one. Further, that team drew more than 20,000 in six of its final seven games.

Oh, there are reasons. Go back to '96. In those days, the word "playoff" was a magical notion. At that point, no major-league team from Tampa Bay had reached any level of playoffs for 13 seasons. The concept of anyone doing so struck us all as amazing.

Now, the Bucs are still in the glow of winning a Super Bowl. In the past seven seasons, the Bucs have made the playoffs five times, and suddenly, the word "playoffs" doesn't sound as exotic.

Back in '96, too, the image of the Lightning was something different. It was young, innocent, a team that never had underachieved. Four years old, and it was already in a playoff race.

These days, the Lightning has some history of its own to overcome. It has spent years driving fans away, far away, and it's a lot to ask all of them to come back at once.

Of course, there is this: There ain't no Sunshine when they're on.

How long does this silly little spat take, people? Over the past few years, the Lightning played 500 games that didn't matter, and two-thirds of those were televised. And now, when things are worth watching, you can't get the games on TV?

This has been going on for weeks, people. Marriages have dissolved and mysteries have been solved since the battles began. And still, the Lightning isn't on TV. (On the other hand, TV analyst Bobby Taylor is quite the celebrity in Fort Walton Beach, which does get the games.)

It's stupid. Frankly, it's about time someone from the Lightning got angry and threatened to jump networks. It's about time sponsors started to refuse payment. It's about time someone raised a stink.

Lightning president Ron Campbell estimated the blackout was costing his team an average of about 1,000 fans a night. That's conservative. I'd guess 2,500. That's how people fall in love with a team, by watching it in glimpses until they cannot stay away.

For example, there was a play against the Islanders when Vinny Lecavalier took the puck, streamed down the right side of the ice and, off balance, reached out with one hand and flicked it back to an open Pavel Kubina.

Kubina's shot was stopped, so the play didn't make highlights, and it didn't make the morning paper. But for a second, it was thrilling. And that's what seeing a team live can do for you.

Here's another reason. Every time I hear someone, a player or an administrator, talk about a possible strike in 2004, I want to scream. There is time enough to go to the mattresses later. For now: Shut up and play.

In other words, yes, there are reasons for the empty seats. But isn't winning supposed to be a pretty good counterargument?

This isn't all those Lightning failures. This is a nice little team on a nice little ride.

Any minute now, you'll hop aboard.

Any second now, you'll want to drive.