Bolting to the top

Style, substance come together in Tampa Bay

With the Tampa Bay Lightning off to such a strong start to the season, many people are asking, “When did they get good and how did it happen?” It certainly didn’t happen overnight and as with any developing team, many factors have led to their transformation.

Ranking the moves in order of importance is a little tricky because of the litany of people in charge -- from owners to general managers to coaches. Certainly, though, much of the credit for the current look of the team has to go to Rick Dudley, now the GM for the Florida Panthers. He swiftly and shrewdly dealt for a number of proven, quality NHL players.

His defining move was to make the deal with the Phoenix Coyotes in the spring of 2001 for holdout goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin. Dudley arrived at that decision after turning the No. 1 goaltending job over to a couple of emerging youngsters -- first Dan Cloutier, then Kevin Weekes. Both are now solidifying their status as capable starters in the league, Cloutier in Vancouver and Weekes with Carolina.

At the time of their opportunity in Tampa Bay, though, neither was quite ready to shoulder the burden of being a NHL No. 1 netminder and the Lightning needed more at the position. They needed someone who had already established his game at this level. Dudley realized that the organization couldn’t afford to have a young goaltender find his game while the team was likewise in the process of defining its makeup.

To further revamp the roster, Dudley addressed the leadership void. He signed Dave Andreychuk and Grant Ledyard as free agents, thus giving the locker room some veteran credibility. Andreychuk remains an important part of the Lightning’s renaissance, recently reaching two impressive milestones -- setting the all-time league mark for power-play goals and reaching the 600-goal plateau.

Andreychuk has embraced his role of providing the element of experience, even though his on-ice presence centers on power-play time, with six of his eight goals fittingly coming with the Lightning enjoying the manpower advantage.

In all, Dudley’s makeover of the current cast includes 13 players he signed as free agents, traded for, or drafted. He then shuffled his coaching staff by naming then-assistant coach and now-current head coach John Tortorella as the man to guide the mostly youthful charges. Dudley also named Craig Ramsey as an assistant, giving the Lightning a tough-minded staff that demanded defensive accountability. Everything was in place for success in today’s NHL, right? Wrong -- at least not right away. Precocious scoring star Vincent Lecavalier clashed with Tortorella from the outset and his personal discontent mitigated much of the team’s improvement last season.

And that’s where the Lightning’s saga gets interesting. Dudley reportedly was set to deal Lecavalier -- a backhanded approach to backing the coach -- but failed to get upper management’s support for the move. As quickly as you can say "corporate turnaround expert," Dudley left and assistant GM Jay Feaster took over.

As his watch approaches a year, Feaster has subtly tweaked this Tampa Bay team. His trade of the fourth pick in the 2002 entry draft to Philadelphia for Ruslan Fedotenko and a draft pick that netted defenseman Brad Lukowich was met with much derision. But Feaster’s priority was in the immediate, not in prospecting. He added two NHL-caliber players, both of whom play just shy of 17 minutes a night for the Lightning. In other words, he did exactly what he set out to do -- bolster the Bolts' lineup now.

Yet Feaster’s major contribution to the process in Tampa might be the sense of stability he has instilled. Whereas Dudley’s strength and management style has always been about personnel moves, Feaster has managed with an even hand. Dudley’s volatility got the franchise to a certain point, but maybe that style wouldn’t have been best suited for the next phase. We’ll never know.

What we do know is that Feaster quietly but firmly posed the challenge to Lecavalier and Tortorella to make it work this season. To their credit, they have. Lecavalier is playing the best hockey of his career, scoring at over a point-per-game pace and more tellingly, leading the Lightning forwards in plus-minus. His attitude and buy-in to the team approach has made all the difference for the Lightning. With his challenge met to his liking, Feaster acknowledged the job well-done and the importance of stability by picking up the contract options of the entire coaching staff.

In all, Feaster is slowly proving he is more than a man in the right place at the right time -- he is the right man at the right time to further aid in the Lightning’s ascent.

Darren Eliot, a former NHL goaltender, is a hockey analyst for CNNSI.com.

 

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