Dino gets what he wants

By TIM BUCKLEY

©St. Petersburg Times, published September 10, 1997

LAKELAND -- Twenty minutes before 6 Tuesday night, Dino Ciccarelli arrived.

He is here. He is happy. And now the Lightning may begin training camp.

"I don't want to go through what I went through this summer again," said Ciccarelli, who met with general manager Phil Esposito and team president Steve Oto after checking in at the team's hotel headquarters. "But if the team's on the right track, I want to stay."

Ciccarelli said he has agreed to terms on a contract extension that will put to rest his threat to hold out of training camp.

His base pay for this season will remain as it was scheduled to be, $1.25-million, but it is believed individual and team incentive bonuses have been rewritten to make the deal potentially more lucrative. The Lightning has agreed to add one year to the contract -- for $2-million, at Ciccarelli's option.

Ciccarelli said he will sign the paperwork this week as long as he and his attorney approve of certain language in the contract. Esposito said the deal, as Ciccarelli wants it, will be submitted to the NHL for approval.

"We're gonna call the league (today) to see if we can get it in," Esposito said. "If that's what he wants, it's fine with us."

After this season, it will be up to Ciccarelli whether he returns to Tampa Bay.

"If the guy doesn't want to be here (then)," Esposito said, "we don't want him."

Ciccarelli, a four-time All-Star and one of the league's top-10 all-time goal scorers, is cautiously optimistic he will want to be back for would his 18th season.

"We're gonna be competitive," he said. "We're not a powerhouse, but we've got some positives. Poops (goalie Daren Puppa, injured most of last season) is back. Brads (center Brian Bradley, also injured much of last season) is back.

"We've got (defenseman Yves) Racine (signed as a free-agent in the off-season), we got (defenseman Jeff) Norton at the (trade) deadline last season, and we've got the new guys (right wing Mikael Renberg and defenseman Karl Dykhuis from Philadelphia)."

Ciccarelli was vocal about his disappointment that the Lightning, which he joined last year, missed the playoffs last season. He questioned the commitment shown by ownership of the team, which is for sale, and criticized the Lightning's off-season decision not match Philadelphia's five-year, $16.5-million offer to center Chris Gratton, Tampa Bay's scoring leader last season.

Tuesday, Ciccarelli indicated he thought the team still has a long way to go but said he wants to be a part of getting there.

"As long as I sign this, I'm committed to this organization," said Ciccarelli, who watched from his home in suburban Detroit as his old club, the Red Wings, won the Stanley Cup this year.

"We should be better," he added. "But we need to be a little more consistent, throughout the season, as a team. We have to be. We have to get in the playoffs. That's the big thing: Get in the playoffs, and anything can happen. Don't just switch on the light the last 10 weeks, either. It starts at the beginning of the season."

Ciccarelli's holdout threats came when Esposito failed to move swiftly on talks about an extension that was promised last season. Ciccarelli said he wanted a decision made early, so that he could register his three daughters -- a second-grader, a fifth-grader and a seventh-grader -- in a Tampa-area school. Now the girls are in school, and the family has moved into a rented Brandon-area home.

"Obviously, moving the kids from school to school is tough," he said. "But they're taking it as a challenge. ... They'll make new friends. They'll get over it."

Camp opens with medical exams today and a scrimmage Thursday, and Ciccarelli is ready.

"Phil's been pretty good, really," he said. "Obviously, his concern was re-doing contracts, and I respect that I have a contract. But there were some things promised me, and we worked through that. ... What's happened is forgotten, as far as I'm concerned."