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A steadfast group has stood by the Lightning since 1992, pouring in time, money and enthusiasm despite all the bad times.
By DAMIAN CRISTODERO
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2001
Lightning general manager Rick Dudley shook his head in awe and admiration when asked about the people who have bought Tampa Bay season tickets every year since the team came into the league for the 1992-93 season.
It wasn't so much the length of time that struck Dudley as noteworthy. After all, families in cities such as New York, Chicago and Detroit have kept season tickets within their control through generations.
No, for Dudley it was that these people, who have 471 accounts representing 1,507 tickets, have stuck with the team and spent lots of money to watch a lot of bad hockey.
"They are amazing fans," Dudley said. "It's one thing to be there through good times, but it's another thing to be there during the bad."
And it has been bad.
The Lightning is the only NHL team to have lost at least 50 games (including overtime losses) in four straight seasons. In nine seasons, the team has lost at least 50 five times.
The team made the playoffs once, in 1995-96. The next year it got close. Since then, it has been miserable. Overall, it has won 219 of 708 games.
Depending on where one lives, it also has been inconvenient because the team has played in three widely scattered venues.
First it was creaky old Expo Hall at the state fairgrounds in eastern Hillsborough County. (Remember having to go outside to find a restroom?) Then it was the ThunderDome, now Tropicana Field, in St. Petersburg. And, finally, a permanent home at the Ice Palace in Tampa.
"They are the true fans," Dudley said. "They are the ones who have been there through thick and thin. You hope at some point they will be rewarded."
Why have they stuck with a team that historically has given them no reason to believe things are going to get better?
Some just love the game and the social atmosphere in their sections. Most truly love the team. Some are even beginning to see reasons for hope.
"The kids are starting to come into their own," Tampa lawyer Luis M. Bessone said. "Is this team going to win the Stanley Cup any time soon? No. But if they can make the playoffs, that's all people want."
For their loyalty, the Lightning gives long-term fans a break on ticket prices. Even so, the hard-core group you will meet in this story have accounts worth between $3,010 and $10,148.
But Dudley knows the ultimate payback.
"I'd like all those people who suffered through the down times to be gratified when it turns around," he said. "And it will. I'd like it to be this year."
So would these fans.
Amazing. That's the only way to describe the Clark family's devotion to the Lightning. John, 76, Charlotte, 75, and Janice, their 51-year-old daughter, live in Lakeland. Lakeland.
Janice said she has missed just one game, a preseason contest two years ago, because she was on vacation. John said he missed one game in 1992 because it fell on election day. Charlotte said she missed four games one season because of the flu.
"We have our own hot stove league up in our section," John said. "It's about six people. We always complain, but what can you do? We love hockey and we love the Lightning."
The family moved in 1975 to Lakeland from Detroit, where they held Red Wings season tickets since 1946. John said he used to take the family to Atlanta to watch the old Flames.
"That was the one thing we missed when we came down here," Janice said. "But as soon as we found out we were getting a team, we were one of the first on the phone calling."
The family's easiest commute was to Expo Hall. The Ice Palace isn't so bad either when you consider the schlep to the ThunderDome, and especially when you consider that Janice works for Bank of America in Tampa, and sometimes drives back to Lakeland to get her parents.
Through it all, the family never considered giving up their tickets.
"There's always hope," Janice said. "Last year the biggest thing I saw was they never quit. They have gotten beat, but they never stopped trying. We didn't have that the last couple of years. Plus, it's very seldom you have a chance to be in on the beginning of a sports franchise. You just have to stick with it."
If there is one thing Ted cannot tolerate, it is hockey fans transplanted to the Tampa Bay area rooting for their former home teams at the Ice Palace.
The worst offenders, he said, are fans of the Red Wings, Rangers, Maple Leafs and Panthers.
"If somebody is from those towns and in Florida on vacation, that's one thing," Ted said. "I was a Toronto Maple Leafs fan all my life, but I don't wear a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt when they come into town.
"Everyone has the right to do what they want, but it just kind of irks me when I see people one night cheering for the Lightning and another night for someone else just because the team from where they used to live is in town."
"When you're living in a city, you should support that city's team," Marion said. "If you're coming from out of town on a visit, I wouldn't object to them wearing a Maple Leafs shirt. But if that same family moved here, darn right I would want them to be Lightning fans."
When the Kresses moved from London, Ontario, to Clearwater 25 years ago, they bled Maple Leafs blue. But when the Lightning showed up, their allegiance shifted.
If the quality of play didn't ensure ticket renewals, their love of the game did. Still, the couple, co-owners of a fastener supply business, said they have wrestled with the cost of their seats, two of which always go to family or friends.
"Sometimes you say to yourself, 'We could go on two or three cruises for this,' " Marion said.
Then again, she said, "Hockey always has been a priority in our family."
Indeed, Ted and Marion, married 32 years, said they were big into the junior team in London.
Marion is the more vocal fan. Ted, 64, said he likes to watch silently as he looks for the game's nuances.
"I'm a strange fan," he said. "People yacking around me just bothers me a little bit. But people are free to do what they want."
Bill and Cathy share their seats in Section 130 with three other couples. Bill wanted to see more games, so he and a friend bought two seats in Section 326.
"It's been hard some of the years," Bill said. "But we're a hockey family. My kids (Patrick 13, Matthew 10 and Andrew, 9) play hockey. I played hockey as a kid in Detroit. The home team may be bad, but I just like to watch the games. It's such a fun game with so much action."
The action got really interesting last season when the Palm Harbor family joined about 30 others -- friends from the neighborhood and some of Bill's old college friends from Lawrence Tech outside Detroit -- to watch the Lightning play the Red Wings. Cathy the kids and many of Bill's buddies were in their Red Wings jerseys. Bill, 45, an engineer, wore his Lightning jersey.
Final score: Lightning 3, Red Wings 0.
"Going home after that game it was a very quiet ride home," Bill said, obviously giddy at the recollection. "All the way home, they had nothing to say."
"If the Lightning can play that way all the time, they'd be Stanley Cup contenders. That has been the highlight of my Lightning games."
Of his family's loyalties, he said, "I always go for the home team. That's the way I look at it with the Lightning."
Bill thinks the Lightning will be better this season, and likes the job Dudley is doing with a limited payroll.
"I think he's doing a good job," Bill said. "They are really starting over and building with youth, and that's the only way. Usually when they have bought superstars, they have never worked out. They get the big dollars and they fade away. I like what he's doing.
"I'd just like to have seen it go a little faster."
It's business as usual for the Lightning, and to Venis, that is not how it should be.
"I see all the players putting in a good effort, but I don't see management stepping up to the plate to get the players they need to," he said. "I think the players that we need are the goal-scorers. I think the Lightning needs to step up and get some 30- or 40-goal scorers and beef up the defense a little bit and I think they'll be fine."
For Venis, any hockey is better than none.
His family moved to Clearwater 30 years ago from Toronto, where he was a diehard Maple Leafs fan. Florida back then, he said, was "a hockey desert."
Venis and his friends did what they could. He said he and perhaps 10 others somehow persuaded the management of Countryside Mall to let them use the facility's indoor rink after hours.
He and friends sometimes drove to Lakeland to find a bar that had cable so they could watch playoff games.
Venis couldn't understand why hockey wasn't more popular in Florida.
"You have all these northerners here," he said, "but they were more interested in football and baseball."
When the Lightning entered the league, he bought tickets "immediately."
"I had to be in," he said. "I've got to support the team. What has basically kept me in through these many years of disgust is my love of hockey. Most people I speak to who are disgusted with the Lightning, they say the same thing. You love the sport, and you go watch it for the sport."
Venis, 43, a chiropractor, said it was Tampa Bay's price freeze that kept him from dropping his seats for this season.
And, not to mention, he really likes the team.
"I'm a Lightning fan more than a Maple Leafs fan," Venis said. "I live here, grew up and went to high school here. I'm pretty much a Lightning fan from Day 1."
Let's see, how should we put this? Bessone is one of those fans who sometimes gets a little loud at games. In fact, his wife Stacey said, "I've been embarrassed. A few times I almost got up and left."
For Bessone and his buddies, though, heaping abuse on the opposing players and the referees is all part of what makes Lightning games a blast.
"It has become fun in that section," Bessone, 33, a lawyer, said. "We all know each other very well and it makes it fun. We all have a good time. We rag on the players and the refs. You have to do that because they are generally losing and you have to find a way to entertain yourself."
Bessone's favorite story occurred about two years ago (he thinks) against (as best he can remember) the Sabres.
Bessone said he was yelling at referee Paul Stewart through a hole in the Ice Palace glass used by photographers. He said another fan reached through the glass and grabbed Stewart's jersey.
"Stewart is an egomaniac," Bessone said. "He stopped the game for five minutes while the cops come down and pull the guy out."
Bessone, whose family came to Tampa from St. Louis when he was in kindergarten, said he has considered giving up his tickets because of the cost and the Lightning's poor record. But he figures if he drops them, the team will probably get good.
"My family had Bucs season tickets for a long time," he said. "I reasoned, if I could hang in there for the Bucs, why not the Lightning?"
Besides, "I love the game and I love this team."
He also thinks Dudley is doing a good job, but wishes owner Bill Davidson would loosen the purse strings.