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Prospal Playing Honest Hockey

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By CARTER GADDIS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 23, 2007

TAMPA - There's something different this season about Vinny Prospal. At first glance, he doesn't quite look like the same guy.

Is it ... could it be ... the hair?

'Yeah, yeah,' said Prospal, who has allowed his formerly close-cropped blond stubble to sprout a little beyond the confines of his Lightning helmet. 'My son 7-year-old Vaclav didn't want to have spiky hair, so I said I'd let it grow. We now have the same cut, kind of.'

Hockey players are a superstitious lot. It's safe to say Prospal, who has scored seven goals in the Lightning's first six games, won't be shaving his head any time soon.

Besides, why change anything now? If you believe you're lucky because of your haircut - or because you happen to share a top scoring line with Vinny Lecavalier and Marty St. Louis - you are.

Whatever the source of his good fortune, any player who already is halfway to his 2006-07 goal total (Prospal scored 14 in 82 games) isn't likely to mess with success.

'I don't want to talk about it,' he said. 'It's only six games. I don't even want to think about it. It's too nice to be going through something like this, so I just leave it alone.'

Which means he probably doesn't want to know that he's on pace for 96 goals and 123 points.

OK, that's not going to happen. Although if it did, imagine the contract the 32-year-old free agent-to-be could command next summer.

Of course, someone who has watched Prospal play these first three weeks might conclude that he's at least partially motivated by the fact that he's in the final season of a five-year, $16.5 million contract he signed with Anaheim in 2003 before being traded back to the Lightning in 2004.

But that someone wouldn't be Lightning coach John Tortorella.

'Vinny Prospal has always cared,' Tortorella said, 'whether he's on a four-year deal or the last year of a deal.'

Indeed, Prospal's most-productive season was 2005-06, when he set career bests for goals (25) and points (80) with no free-agent dollars on the line. Those numbers made last season even more frustrating for Prospal and a Lightning organization that counted on his production to take some pressure off Lecavalier and St. Louis.

Tortorella observed after Prospal collected three points (including his third two-goal game of the season) in a 6-2 victory against Atlanta on Saturday that Prospal is playing an 'honest' game this year.

'He's trying to win battles. He's doing a good job defensively. He's playing a complete game,' Tortorella said Monday. 'It's not a game of cheating to try and get your goals. I don't think he's ever been that way, but last year, he just had some tough luck. But I think he's concentrated on all the details of the game and that allows the offense to come. That's being honest. Just playing the right way.'

In addition, Prospal did everything he could this past summer - physically and mentally - to make sure he wouldn't go through a repeat of the first half of last season, when he collected only three goals in the first 38 games and didn't score his seventh until Jan. 15.

'I put a little more meaning - not like I didn't do before - but I knew that I barely saved my job here last year,' said Prospal, referring to midseason trade rumors. 'You never know what's going to happen. It could've been anybody. For me, on my personal level, I just wanted to make sure I rebound from the year I had last year. I mean, the first half.'

It's proper that he make the distinction between that first half and the rest of the year, which ended with a flourish: a goal and four assists in Tampa Bay's six-game loss to New Jersey in the first round of the playoffs.

With his newly flowing locks and suddenly uncanny scoring touch, Prospal seems to have picked up where he left off in April, rather than reverting to the doldrums of a year ago.

'I had a pretty bad year last year, a pretty bad first half,' he said. 'I just wanted to play this year the same way I finished last season and in the playoffs. So far, so good.'

PROSPEROUS PROSPAL

It's early yet, but the pace Lightning LW Vinny Prospal is on has put him on a potentially historic path (96 goals, 123 points). A year-by-year breakdown of Prospal's production:

Reporter Carter Gaddis can be reached at (813) 259-8291 or igaddis@tampatrib.com.

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