TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Lightning's New Start Excites St. Louis

Tribune photo by JASON BEHNKEN

Martin St. Louis, right, is eager to begin the new season under new owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie.

ADVERTISEMENT

By ERIK ERLENDSSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2008

Updated: 09/15/2008 12:48 am

BRANDON - At times this summer, Marty St. Louis wasn't quite sure what to make of all the frenzied moves made by new Lightning ownership.

But as he arrived back in town recently to prepare for the opening of training camp, he knows one thing for sure - it's no longer business as usual within the organization.

"They have made our team better ... it's exciting," he said recently in between workouts at the Ice Sports Forum. "They have spent some money and they want to win. It's night and day in terms of what it was like before. I have nothing bad to say about Mr. Davidson and everything they did, but we never saw them, we don't know how much they cared.

"But these guys here, from the get-go have been hands on and they want to do whatever it takes to win and that's good for the team."

The roster overhaul has been staggering to witness, especially for St. Louis, who is now the second-longest tenured player on the team behind Vinny Lecavalier. Since February, St. Louis has also seen good friends - and former fellow cornerstones of the franchise - Brad Richards and Dan Boyle traded away.

When the players assemble for reporting day Tuesday morning at the St. Pete Times Forum, the locker room not only will have a different look, but also it will have a different feel.

"It's weird, it's definitely weird," St. Louis said. "But at the same time, it's the nature of the game, we have to move on. We will always have a special bond because of what we did winning a Stanley Cup in 2004, but that's not now.

"It's a new era and we have to be open-minded."

That includes the new philosophies of a coaching staff that is headed by longtime ESPN hockey analyst Barry Melrose, whose last game behind the bench for an NHL game came in 1995. But the 2004 league MVP and scoring champion doesn't see Melrose's lack of bench time in the past decade as much of a detriment.

"It's not like he's been in a cave during that time," St. Louis said of his new head coach. "He's been around hockey, he's seen his fair share of hockey games, he's seen the changes in hockey that have gone. He's had plenty of opportunities to evaluate and I'm sure he's asked himself many times what he would do with this team or that team or how he would handle things.

"It's a new start for everybody and now we have to earn his respect."

With all the changes that have occurred, walking into the locker room this year for the few remaining links to Tampa Bay's championship season will have the feeling of being traded without the inconvenience of having to move.

"There's certainly a lot of new guys, but that's the nature of the beast, when you finish last there usually are a lot of changes," St. Louis said. "From the owners, the coaches, the players ... I'm looking forward to working with all the new people that have been brought in."

St. Louis said that because the hockey community is a close-knit group - "you may not know them personally, but you know them as a player" - coming together in the locker room and getting to know each other is not going to be an issue.

"Sure, there are a lot of new guys and I want to see how we are all going to jell on the ice," he said. "For the top line, myself, Vinny and Vinny Prospal, there really is no adjustment that has to be made. But on a team level, there definitely are going to be some adjustments to be made. We have some young guys to go along with the new players brought in and I look forward to seeing it all come together."

Reporter Erik Erlendsson can be reached at (813) 259-7835 or eerlendsson@tampatrib.com.

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT