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For team needing a jolt, spark plug kicks in

By GARY SHELTON
Published April 24, 2006

OTTAWA - The situation was dire. The doubts were growing. Trouble was brewing. If most people bothered to count the Lightning at all, it was to count it out.

It was, in other words, the perfect situation for Marty St. Louis.

Doubts? St. Louis has dealt with them most of this season, and frankly, for most of his seasons before this one. Trouble? That seems to be when St. Louis takes the game most personally. He has spent a career skating between long odds and constant questions, hauling a team on his back and a chip on his shoulder along the way.

It happened again Sunday. St. Louis ignited the Lightning to a 4-3 victory over the Senators. Along the way, he tied a playoff series and he resuscitated a team that would have looked dead in the water had this game gotten away. Once again, Mighty Mouse saved the day.

He scored two goals, including the winner. He threw his body around as if he were a middle linebacker. He spent the third period sliding on his stomach through the defensive zone to knock away passes. He was fast, he was furious and he was physical.

Given the circumstances, why would you expect anything else?

Subpar season or not, this is St. Louis. This is what he does, and Sunday's game was precisely the sort of time when he seems to do it. Remember two years ago, when Calgary had a chance to put the Lightning away in Game 6? St. Louis scored the biggest goal in team history. Remember the opening series of that year, when the Lightning looked sloppy against the Islanders? St. Louis stood up then, too.

This time, St. Louis plugged back in the possibilities. Had the Lightning lost this game, the temptation would have been to call in a priest for last rites. For a hockey team, the difference between 0-2 and 1-1 is the difference, basically, between climbing a mountain and falling off it.

Instead, St. Louis was inspiration-in-a-can, and the rest of his team fed off his electricity.

"That little (extremely obscene word)," said coach John Tortorella, laughing. "He's been so much maligned this year. His heart was as big as the building."

By now, Tampa Bay fans are aware that's the largest part of St. Louis. He is listed at 5-9 and 185, but like the Canadian dollar, it appears he has shrunk a bit from the conversion. No matter. A great many things are as dangerous as they are small. Vipers. Viruses. Spit in your eye.

There is some of that to St. Louis, too. As important as his goals were, the talk of his game on Sunday will begin with the kill shot he put on 230-pound Anton Volchenkov.

It was midway through the second period, and play seemed to stop while Volchenkov juggled the puck. Everyone but St. Louis, who swept in and popped him. It was a pretty good lick, all in all, much like the shot he had given 6-9, 260-pound Zdeno Chara in the opening game.

"I'm trying to play physical," St. Louis said. "I'm trying to get in faces. This time of year, the only time I feel like I'm playing well is when I get involved physically. I want them to know they can hit me, but I'm going to hit back. I'm going to play to the whistle."

Pretty much that was the lesson the Lightning delivered Sunday. Though Ottawa seemed to have Tampa Bay's number, though it looked as if this series might be over before the Lightning players could manage playoff stubble, there is some scrap here.

"I think that was one of those situations where Marty was trying to deliver a message to the team," Tortorella said. "He was dead on in this game as far as his intensity and the way he wanted to put the game on his back."

His stick was pretty good, too. The Lightning trailed 1-0 when he scored his first goal, taking a perfect pass from Vinny Prospal and firing it past Ottawa's Ray Emery. The score was tied at 3 in the third, a situation the Senators usually own, when St. Louis flashed past Volchenkov to tuck a rebound into the goal for the winner.

Just like that, reality was altered. Just like that, the Lightning didn't seem so overmatched, after all.

For St. Louis, it has been a difficult year. The echoes of his MVP season seemed to affect him, and he spent much of it trying to explain what had happened to his game. He finished strongly, however, and Sunday you could not help but remember what he brought to his team at the most important of times the last time the Lightning was in the playoffs.

"Marty is a big-time player, and he shows it over and over again," teammate Tim Taylor said. "People count him out as much as they count us out as a team, and he steps forward all the time.

"He bleeds the Bolt. He exemplifies what this team is all about."

It always has been easy to see St. Louis as the ultimate symbol of the Lightning. They share humble beginnings and meager expectations, and together, they have grown into something admirable. There is a dash of I'll-show-you to both of them.

"We battled back," St. Louis said. "That's the type of team we are. We're a bunch of battlers. If people don't believe in us, we're going to push harder."

More than the speed, more than the flair, perhaps that is St. Louis' greatest gift. There is some fight to the little cuss, something that challenges you to reconsider the odds.

Five games to go, three of them at home, and St. Louis has done it again.

He has allowed Tampa Bay to think ... maybe.

[Last modified April 24, 2006, 01:40:15]