"You guys seen Dinger?" Phil Thibodeau asked, cradling a clipboard in the crease of a bent elbow and looking for Chris Dingman.
"Yeah."
Check!
"Who's missing?," he asked.
"Marty and Mo."
As in Martin St. Louis, the league's leading scorer and its likely most valuable player. As in Fredrik Modin, who would eventually lead the Lightning with eight points in five Eastern Conference quarterfinals games.
Less than two minutes before the scheduled takeoff of the Lightning's team charter for a recent playoff game, Thibodeau, the team's 33-year-old traveling secretary really, really wanted to check off those final two, very important names. One could almost hear Lightning coach John Tortorella tapping his foot above the stirring engines of the 737 on the nearby tarmac.
Thibodeau inhaled a mighty drag on what was supposed to be his last Marlboro Light before takeoff.
Serenity, if only for a moment.
By the time Thibodeau about-faced from the small terminal at Raytheon Aircraft Services and started striding again toward the drop-off loop, the bobbing heads of St. Louis and Modin could be seen behind a row of gleaming sports cars and sport-utility vehicles.
A minute or two late? Acceptable.
Check and check!
"You just get in the habit of counting heads, and it's funny because Torts hates the way I keep track of my list," Thibodeau said. "But he's the first guy to ask me when it's time to go who's not there. But if I don't use a list, how do I know who's there? It's an ongoing joke with him. He wants me to get rid of my list to lower my stress level, and I told him that would only raise my stress level."
Thibodeau said an occasional player has been left behind - not because of a scheduling problem, but because he arrived late and Tortorella ordered him to fly commercial to the next city or take a cab to the arena.
Jet-setting on charter flights, eating fancy meals and sleeping in fancier hotels are some of the perks of traveling with a professional sports team unless it's your job to coordinate them.
Then there's handling per diem meal money, finding living arrangements for minor-league call-ups and handling player and staff ticket requests.
Pass the smokes.
"Right now, the tougher part is when you go to Canada, with all the new rules since 9-11 with immigration and stuff like that," Thibodeau said. "But the tougher part with the playoffs is not knowing where you're going and having different cities on hold and having your airline crew on hold. Everything is on hold until you know what you're doing, and we can't do anything without a schedule."
That's why you finalize every detail you can well ahead. Thibodeau begins sketching the team's regular-season travel itinerary the same day the NHL passes a proposed schedule to general manager Jay Feaster in July.
Major details include charter flights, hotels, meals and the bus lines that shuttle the team between the airport, hotel and arena. Though any plan can be changed at the last minute by Tortorella, it stays basically set once the final schedule is released.
"The other coaches (made a lot of late changes), but Torts is great," Thibodeau said. "He is black and white, and he knows what he wants to do to almost 100 percent. And he keeps it that way. With the unforeseeable stuff with the weather and the hotels sold out, anything can change, but he is great that way.
"He never says he is unsure and "check with me tomorrow.' He knows what he wants to do and does it."
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