Season Review: Tampa Bay Lightning

Well, now that people are talking playoffs, I will be reviewing the seasons of teams as they're either eliminated from the playoffs or eliminated from playoff contention before the end of the season. Obviously, the last team reviewed will be the one that wins the Cup.

Now the fifth team to be eliminated from playoff contention: The Tampa Bay Lightning.

Season expectations: These guys were the winners of the Steven Stamkos derby at the 2008 draft and got Victor Hedman as a consolation prize in 2009. While the ownership situation left much to be desired (it got so bad for Len Barrie and Oren Koules that now neither of them are owning the team) the team still had big guns like Vinny LeCavalier and Martin St. Louis up front, so with the additions they made following that one would have suspected that if they weren't going to be playoff contenders, they could have at least made enough noise in a weak division to kinda crash the party. Regardless, they're nowhere near as dominant as they were when they won the Cup in 2004, leaving the expectations to be higher than teams that have often failed.

My prediction: I figured they would have been fourth in their division and 12th in the Eastern Conference.

The truth: The team was one of three teams from the Southeast Division to be eliminated from playoff contention on Saturday. They were the only one to do so without having a game to play. Ouch.

What went wrong?: You mean besides the ridiculous ownership group that didn't last two seasons when the late Bill Davison (Rest In Peace) delivered a Stanley Cup to Tampa Bay during the same year he delivered a NBA Championship to Detroit?

Well, you can't blame it on St. Louis or Stamkos because those guys were tenacious. You really can't blame Steve Downie (though you can blame him for a lot of other things on the ice) because he was an excellent agitating two-way performer.

Injuries sucked for this team. Though Mike Smith was wrought with inconsistency, there's no telling how his concussion issues from last season affected his chances of establishing himself as a starter (though it did effectively give Antero Niitymatti an NHL job next season). And again, the injuries that mounted up to the defensive corps watched a group of players get thrust into NHL action. Someone's gotta do something with the trainers of that team because that's kinda how it went down last season, too.

Inconsistency was an issue too. Tampa Bay scored Alex Tanguay off the free agent market for far less than what the Phoenix Coyotes presumably offered him. The result? He's looking to finish both sub-40 points and with a minus rating for the first season since he's turned professional. Mattias Ohlund also took a step back during his first season as a member of the Lightning and is looking to finish with his first sub-20 point season since playing in North America. Neither LeCavalier or Ryan Malone were spectacular this season but when you're playing through injuries you can't typically produce the way you want. While Zenon Konopka was able to finally establish himself as an NHLer, their defensive forwards were unremarkable and could stand some fine tweaking in the off-season.

So what's next?: Well, Jeff Vinik's going to have to make decisions as to how this team is being run and start from there. GM Brian Lawton put together a decent group of scoring forwards and two decent goaltenders, but somehow can't figure out how to make the team better fortified defensively. I figure he'll be looking for a new job before the draft. Coach Rick Tocchet was not as impressive with the team during his first full season as many would have hoped, but he does have St. Louis and Stamkos firing on 8-cylinders a piece, so he's doing something right as far as that goes and will probably get a little more leeway until another miserable season buries him for good. The team will need to get better in the middle of the ice during the off-season to have a chance to be competitive next season. Otherwise, all the goal scoring in the world isn't going to work out if you can't keep the puck out of the net.