Speculation: 2024-2025 General Lightning Discussion II: Farewell 2024

[Peacefool]

If somehow McDavid,McKinnon and Point will play at same line at 4 nations,they should by the rules be wearing overweight skates that they can be only 1.5 faster than other guys on other teams xD

 

[Hockeyville USA]

Hagel and Cirelli have made this team hold above water even with injury issues.

 

[Flat Ronnie]

Heres our chance to bring in the big elbow!!

 

[bigdaddio]

Nice to have an easy win but I'm concerned we still gave up soooo many breakaways and if Vasy wasn't sharp as a knife we might have won 8-5. I never played hockey so I can't say exactly what's going on but we give up way too many breakaways on routine looking plays. One thing turning it over at the blue line but these are just ping pong ping passes from deep in the other zone.

 

[LordStanlersCup]

Nice to have an easy win but I'm concerned we still gave up soooo many breakaways and if Vasy wasn't sharp as a knife we might have won 8-5. I never played hockey so I can't say exactly what's going on but we give up way too many breakaways on routine looking plays. One thing turning it over at the blue line but these are just ping pong ping passes from deep in the other zone.

Its the D pinching up and the forwards arent covering for them. Sometimes its the D's fault for pinching when the forwards are already overextending and sometimes its the forwards fault for not backchecking hard enough. It is usually the same suspects though

 

[Peacefool]

Omg Point has 600 NHL games...time flyes so fast, for me he is still kinda new Nhl player with bright future xD

 

[Rschmitz]

Nice to have an easy win but I'm concerned we still gave up soooo many breakaways and if Vasy wasn't sharp as a knife we might have won 8-5. I never played hockey so I can't say exactly what's going on but we give up way too many breakaways on routine looking plays. One thing turning it over at the blue line but these are just ping pong ping passes from deep in the other zone.

This happened all the time in 2019 when we won the Presidents Trophy, we'd dominate early and pack it in, developed a lot of horrible tendencies that carried over into the playoffs unfortunately.

They stopped skating once the game was out of hand, I wouldn't analyze it much for a single game.

 

[Hockeyville USA]

Its the D pinching up and the forwards arent covering for them. Sometimes its the D's fault for pinching when the forwards are already overextending and sometimes its the forwards fault for not backchecking hard enough. It is usually the same suspects though

We were sooooo bad with this last year. Perbix, Raddysh, Sergachev, and sometimes Hedman would pinch, and it would be a breakaway or 2 on 1 for the opposition.

 

[LordStanlersCup]

We were sooooo bad with this last year. Perbix, Raddysh, Sergachev, and sometimes Hedman would pinch, and it would be a breakaway or 2 on 1 for the opposition.

Pinching isn't necessarily bad in itself, if done correctly it is super useful but if they are going to run this system they need D with really good awareness of where the opposition and our forwards are and I can't say thats the case for every defenseman on this roster. Lilleberg is the most egregious offender imo, him and Dumba have no positional awareness. Really hoping we get a defenseman like M. Pettersson at the TDL who would thrive in this system that they are trying to play. Some bottom 6 forwards that can backcheck also wouldn't hurt.

 

[Stammertime91]

Have we fired Cooper yet because we gave up one goal last night? Why are we still trending this way? Will Cooper ever be held accountable for not winning 8-0? We need a ball buster ASAP.

 

[Point21]

Have we fired Cooper yet because we gave up one goal last night? Why are we still trending this way? Will Cooper ever be held accountable for not winning 8-0? We need a ball buster ASAP.

should be fired for not pulling the goalie with 5 minutes left

 

[DrMartinVanNostrand]

Just a random sports dump because I have way too much time to parse these details...

Since the 2002-'03 season - which encompasses 21 of our 32 seasons as an active franchise - the Lightning have a generally good W-L record. I parsed out all shootout results and parsed out all 3v3 OT results (since 2015-'16), but in that time our regulation + 4v4 OT record is 758-652.

However, much like the baseball team in this way, our first ten seasons were so wretchedly bad (246-456), that our overall franchise record still sits over 100 games below .500. 1004-1108. We've only had six below .500 seasons in the last 20 completed seasons (none since 2012-'13) and won the Stanley Cup three times yet we've still have only erased half that deficit our first ten seasons game us (from -210 down to now "just" -104).

Our playoff record all-time is 122-94, so add that in and that moves us to 1126-1202, shaving another 28 games off.

Regardless, we've still got a ways left to go to get the franchise to a true .500+ record overall.

(We went 55-163 between 1997-2000. That's diabolically bad, like what the hell was going on?)

 

[Rschmitz]

(We went 55-163 between 1997-2000. That's diabolically bad, like what the hell was going on?)

No cap floor and ownership that had no money, not even for basic operations, the team literally had no money to pay their players.

So obviously...no scouting department, no money for free agents, no money for competent management/coaches. It was a minor miracle that Andreychuk signed here off the scrap heap in the summer of 2001.

 

[These Are The Days]

No cap floor and ownership that had no money, not even for basic operations, the team literally had no money to pay their players.

So obviously...no scouting department, no money for free agents, no money for competent management/coaches. It was a minor miracle that Andreychuk signed here off the scrap heap in the summer of 2001.

@DrMartinVanNostrand equally miraculous was Rick Dudley trading all the way up to a Stanley Cup champion from a pack of expired chewing gum. It started with Jassen Cullimore as the first player on our team from the 2004 club and ended with Daryl Sydor. With everything in between being such an inexplicable amount of BS and luck you'd have to surmise that God himself put on a Lightning jersey intervened on our behalf.

Trading for Fedotenko, Boyle, Modin and Khabibulin. Signing St. Louis and Andreychuk, having Torts as our coach overseeing the rise of Brad Richards and Pavel Kubina. All the while the most miraculous part of this story was Torts and Vinny repairing their relationship so much he went from a 1st overall with some promise to perhaps best player in the world depending on what night Crosby and Ovechkin were playing. I know we had Feaster when we won the Cup but Dudley put the leg work in on most of these moves.

I don't think people realize how actually crazy this is. This is basically as much as what Yzerman did starting with Stamkos and Hedman but with literal, ACTUAL nothing with no salary cap. And for the purposes of this story, Kucherov was a free agent that Calgary didn't care to sign

 

[These Are The Days]

Oh yeah and Dudley's drafting was SOOOOOOOOOO effing bad. Oh my God. He drafted guys like Svitov and Alexeev along with every AI generated random Russian player and STILL won a Cup anyway.



Again. God intervened for us and I will fight anyone who disagrees with me.

 

[Rschmitz]

Dudley more than made up for his poor drafting with brilliant trades and signings, and its not like he did anything outrageous during the draft despite his fondness for Russians. His problem is that he had to constantly tinker with the lineup instead of letting them develop an identity. His desire to trade Lecavalier is what turned everyone against him.

 

[Hoek]

Correction, Feaster traded for Fedotenko and Sydor, not Dudley, who was dumped for trying to ship off Vinny.

 

[These Are The Days]

Correction, Feaster traded for Fedotenko and Sydor, not Dudley, who was dumped for trying to ship off Vinny.

I knew about Sydor being Feaster but thought Fedotenko might have been a Dudley move too. Fits the Russian/Ukranian MO he always had.

 

[Hoek]

Feaster took a lot of abuse for that Fedotenko trade since he traded a first rounder (4th overall, which the Flyers used to draft Joni Pitkanen, who ended up just being okayish). Of course he'd go on to score twice in Game 7 to clinch the cup so it's all good.

 

[Rschmitz]

That is the book on Feaster, all he knew how to do was trade lottery picks for immediate help. He couldn't draft or evaluate talent, infamously saying Grahame was an adequate replacement for Khabibulin, and then trading Modin a few years later for Marc freaking Denis. His last major act of incompetence was trading Brad Richards in the middle of a last place season for three middling players because he thought "we are still a competitive team".

His inability to surround our stars with complimentary players, while we slowly bled talent, culminated in us transitioning back to a cellar dwellar team. The silver lining being we got Stamkos and Hedman I guess.

 

[Bozo Nicholson]

Have we fired Cooper yet because we gave up one goal last night? Why are we still trending this way? Will Cooper ever be held accountable for not winning 8-0? We need a ball buster ASAP.

That’s it, I’ve had it with this bum. We’ve got no food, we’ve got no jobs…our pets’ heads are falling off!

 

[barriers]

 

[Felonious Python]

Congrats to the Panthers and Blackhawks.

 

[JTBF81]

How do the Panthers get an outdoor game in an even more hot and humid location when the Bolts can't get one at RJ for similar concerns?

 

[Felonious Python]

How do the Panthers get an outdoor game in an even more hot and humid location when the Bolts can't get one at RJ for similar concerns?

Miami/South Florida could probably use more of a push than smallish market Tampa Bay.

I also think the NHL prefers baseball stadiums to football fields.