ESPN – Group led by MacLean agrees to buy Lightning – NHL

WOW!

and

WOW!

Excuse me, did I just say WOW!

Maybe I’m just WAY, WAY out of the loop, but I had no idea this was in the offing. I’m of two minds about prior ownership. On one hand, they delivered the home team from it’s losing ways to an unimaginable championship. On the other, they claim poverty, won’t spend the salary cap, and attend fewer home games than I do. You’d like to think ownership cares as much about the team as you do. Although everyone says it’s just a business, you’d like to think the owners are at least fans. It was hard to picture the Davidsons as mildly interested… forget about being rabid fans.

There’s no confusing MacLean… he’s a hockey guy. The question remains: will he be a good owner. We know what bad owners look like, having had LOTS of them… in three different sports (four, if you count Orlando in the mix). We should be able to tell pretty quick.

At 8:30pm or so I went through my progression of local sports channels… 31, 69, 17…

First I caught the Lightning game… 3 – 1… the other guys… no wait, make that 4 – 1.

Crap.

Flipping the channel I caught the Rays game… 7 – 1… the other guys on top.

I didn’t really feel like watching TV anyway.

If you walk up the stairs on the third level of the St. Pete Times Forum, you will find two seats right at the top, looking down the stairs from either side of the center handrail, seats 3 and 4, row S. This was where Beth watched her first live hockey game.

Her first impression was, “there are a LOT of people here dad.”

“Yeah, it’s great, nothing like Rays games, is it?”

On a related note, it was quite a bit louder. It turns out that 20,000 people can make a lot of noise, if they really want to. Throw in a horn and a solid roof to bounce sound off of; and suddenly Beth’s voice isn’t loud enough anymore.

That mild, sick feeling in the pit of your stomach? Those mild tremors that resemble cold weather shivers? The feeling that your heart is racing out of control? That’s called anxiety.

The hockey game tonight? That’s called game seven.

From the Office of Handicapping and Prognostication; here are a few predictions for tonight’s game,

1. If the Lightning loose tonight, they will have a really tough time winning the cup this year.
2. One of the teams will play well enough to win.
3. One team will give up at least one too many goals.
4. At some point, one of the teams will score.
5. Someone on the broadcast team will use the word “Canadian” in a sentence correctly.
6. No fewer than three of the commentators will utter the phrase “,all of Canada,.”
7. I will watch the entire game.
8. I will consider taking something to relieve my symptoms.
9. At some point during the evening I will wish I had set my VCR to record the game and watched something else.

Barely two years removed from wretchedness, the Lightning are treating us with performances that can only be described with superlatives. As of right now they are the best team in the Eastern Conference, and only a game back from being the best in the entire league. I was joking with a friend that for an encore, the Rays would finish second to the Yankees and qualify for the playoffs as a wild card (notice I didn’t suggest they would finish first – I may be unrealistic but I’m not snorting aerosol deodorant).

I am happy to announce that I will be at the game tonight. The Devils of New Jersey are in town for a little action, hockey style. As I write this I am at work, waiting impatiently for quitting time. What better way to cope with the harsh realities of your life than to share it with others