Game 59: Bruins at Tampa Bay WHO WANTS TO BE STAMMER'S SWEETHEART?

Game 59
7:40 PM February 11, 2010
NESN, 98.5 FM
@ Tampa Bay Lighting (26-21-11)

Seen Stamkos? Yeah, goalies have been. Or maybe they haven't, and that's the problem. He's been scoring like crazy - 5th in the league with 33 goals on the season. He's scoring at 0.57 Goals/Game, 6th in the league. For comparison, Kovalchuk is at 0.58. Ovechkin is at 0.81. (Ovechkin is this year's MVP easily, by the way.) Where do those goals come from? A league-leading 14 goals come on the powerplay. Of course, he's no slouch at even strength, scoring 18 there. Hmmm...let's see, 18+14=32 goals, and he has 33. Where could that be? Why, at 8:44 of the second period of the November 11th Minnesota at Tampa Bay game, when he scored a short-handed goal.

So yeah, the kid is pretty good.

The other big story about the Lightning is that they just got bought by Boston money manager Jeff Vinik. Which means that this page is now out of date. I think they're the only team in the league that has "Owners" listed above things people care about like "Rosters" and "In the System" and such. Whatever. The Lightning still have some silly advertising options, like the "Stammer's Sweetheart" package:

Look at how excited little Stevie is to be posing with his Grandma!

Who doesn't want a romantic valentine's day hockey date punctuated by a visit from Thunderbug?

This team also advertises a "Fan Club Battle" where you can join Zanon Konopka's or Matt Smaby's fan club by....drum roll....buying a special ticket pack!

Seriously, though, sometimes I wish I didn't live in Boston or other established hockey market so the pre-game stuff amounted to more than occasionally having the same awful cover band play in one half of the player's lot.

Also their season tickets are a great deal. Basically, if you're reading this, living in Tampa, and like hockey...go to a bunch of Lightning games.

Stats!
The Lightning have a bottom-third PK.

A streak of 2 is nice. A streak of 3 would be nicer. A non-shutout regulation win would be somewhere in there too, just to prove we can. Nothing wrong with the other team getting shut out, though.

GO BRUINS!