Nice to see that Hockeys back and it will carry into the baseball season..Channelside has almost been a ghost town..

Joe Maddon probably likes hockey. All the substitutions.

skimp, what a thing to say about the 'Exalted One'! If he doesn't get his act together before long, he's gonna be a 'substitution'!

Maddon could play the shift in Hockey. His glasses already act as puck deflectors.

I like the Lightning, go to about a dozen games a year, I respect Jeffrey Vinick, but no NHL for me after this fiasco....I took our hockey game money and put into more Rays tickets and now we will be going to about 26 games!!

What's a hockey? Oh that "sport" where there is a lockout every 5 years.

Kind of interesting...the Lightning win the Cup in '04 and they lose the entire '05 season to a labor dispute. Now poor Jeff Vinick dumps a ton into the team, the Forum and the community and a labor dispute rips the life out of the league...AGAIN. These guys must be nuts allowing this to happen with a poor economy and a "watered down" product to begin with. They were hanging on by their "fingernails" before...it could get very ugly. Perhaps these hockey guys never heard about what happened to MLB after the 1994 strike...or maybe they don't care.

I'm told That Vinick kept all the Employees working or paid them regardless..The Strike would have been settled early if it was up to him..I like hockey too much to miss any games I can attend..PS HE ALSO refunded money...This is a good owner..

Vinick was one of the few good guy owners in this whole mess, and yes he did continue to pay employees their regular salary even though some didn't work or had their hours cut.....he is a total class act.........But the NHL, not Mr. Vinick, has just turned me off to spending any money to see them play.....Thus, as I am sure others have, we put it towards extra Rays tickets

Right Case and I can tell you from experience there are so many bad owners in professional hockey, you couldn't count them all. Back in the day, I followed the Philadelphia Blazers in the old WHA, the Flyers("Broad Street Bullies" - WOW!), then the LA Kings when I moved to LA in the '80's. In the late '80's I was Marketing Director for the Erie Panthers (one of the original 5 franchises the first year of the ECHL). The game is captivating at many levels but team ownership throughout professional hockey is a complete joke! Lightning ownership since its inception is only a tiny sample of the concept and the lower you go in professional hockey the more sleazy and volitile it gets...Mr. Vinick is truely an exeption in every way!