Lightning

Feaster might not gloat, but he could

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© St. Petersburg Times
published March 27, 2003

There are moments, sweet, delicious, giddy moments, when all logic and reason take leave of Jay Feaster, a logical and reasonable man.

In the best of victories, when the euphoria bubbles up and overflows, Feaster cannot contain himself. In those moments, he becomes Screaming Jay, a man of passion, a man of fire. A man who, from time to time, tends to burst into the locker room of the Tampa Bay Lightning, throw back his head and loudly, proudly and profanely scream his joy to the ceiling.

For Feaster, this should be one of those times.

Go ahead. Let Screaming Jay loose.

If you were Feaster, wouldn't you shout a little bit? Wouldn't you dance and point and stick your thumbs in your ears and waggle your fingers at all the critics? Feaster has every reason to exult. He has pulled off a rare double for the Lightning.

His team is in the playoffs.

Also, he didn't get fired.

He could have. Had this been another wheel-spinning, knuckle-dragging season for the Lightning, we'd all be gathering about now to discuss what went wrong and why and, oh, does anyone have the size of Feaster's neck?

"If we had been bad again, people would be wondering," he said. "They'd still be talking about the minor-league general manager in over his head."

Yep, with a franchise that had been through three general managers, five coaches and a million excuses, Feaster sure looked like a convenient target.

For one thing, Feaster lacked pedigree. He hadn't played in the NHL (or anywhere else). He hadn't coached here (or anywhere else). It was easy to wonder: Who else would have hired him? He was the GM, presumably, because he could keep track of all Bill Davidson's nickels.

For another, Feaster dared to be optimistic. About time? You're darned right it's about time, he'd say. The playoffs? Of course we should make a run at the playoffs, he'd say.

It was Feaster who walked into the middle of the Tortorella-Lecavalier spat. It was Feaster who traded the No.4 pick in the draft for a bounty most of us thought was insufficient. It was Feaster who made people roll their eyes when he cut scouting, when he brought fewer players to camp, because the moves looked like they were designed with payroll, not performance, in mind.

So, yeah, it's fair to say Feaster has been surrounded by a little skepticism over the past few months.

Which, of course, should make today even sweeter.

Somewhere along the way, Feaster brought a sense of calm, of order, to the front office of the Lightning. Suddenly, the front door didn't spin as players came and left. Suddenly, decisions seemed better thought out, considered more carefully. Expectations have replaced excuses.

"I'm proud of what we've done," Feaster said, and he laughed, although it wasn't nearly as loud as he has coming. "Yeah, I guess vindication is a good word. We did things the right way.

"We've stabilized the situation. We had been a turnover-heavy organization. We never gave the recipe a chance. If the recipe says you mix it and you bake it for 20 minutes and then you'll have a cake, we'd be looking in the oven after five minutes and saying, 'It doesn't look like a cake.' And we'd add some eggs and take out some water and put in some other water and, in the end, we never did get a cake.

"If you let it bake, maybe you taste it and say, 'That's a terrible cake. Let's change some ingredients.' But first, you have to let it bake."

From the outside, it is as easy to believe in the odds of Jay Feaster, pastry chef, as it is Jay Feaster, NHL general manager. His road to becoming a general manager in the NHL was not, as they say, the beaten ice.

He didn't play hockey, okay? He went to Georgetown Law School with the idea of becoming a district attorney and putting all the goons -- no, those without skates -- behind bars. It was only when he took a look at his law school loans and realized he needed to land with a good firm that he gave up on that idea.

Eventually, he went to work for the Hershey Bears, and he became general manager. This is important, because it should be noted that Feaster loved hockey growing up. It isn't as if someone put the franchise in the charge of someone who didn't know the difference between a puck and a ring box, someone who had no clue about the game. Why, that could never happen. Well, not since Steve Oto, anyway.

Even today, Feaster doesn't thump his chest and refer to himself as a hockey guy. If you're scoring at home, he says his hockey knowledge is about a seven on a scale of 10. But it's enough, he said, when he surrounds himself with people such as personnel director Bill Barber and coach John Tortorella.

"I never doubted I had the ability to do this job," Feaster said.

Others did. Sports Illustrated, for one, which is why Feaster has had a little fun at the magazine's expense this week. Feaster still says he's canceling his subscription.

Gee, Jay. Won't you miss the swimsuit issue?

"I'll tell you how old I'm getting," he said. "When that issue came this year, I thumbed right through it to the athletes section, because I knew Vinny was in there. The first thing that struck me was the great placement of our logo in the picture."

For Feaster, it has been a good year. The optimism he was selling? The players bought into it. The Lecavalier-Tortorella feud? It's buried, and Lecavalier has blossomed. The draft day trade brought in Ruslan Fedotenko, who has 17 goals, including six game winners.

Above all, the credibility has begun to return. Once more, this is a likeable team. Once more, it seems to have a plan.

Next time you see Feaster, then, slap him on the back. Congratulate him. Wish him well.

After all, you were with him all the time.