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Bolts' championship seems so long ago

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By ERIK ERLENDSSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 7, 2009

AMPA - The banner will forever hang from the rafters. The names will forever be etched into history. The memories will linger for generations.

Together, the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning championship team will walk forever.

Five years ago tonight, Dave Andreychuk was handed the Stanley Cup and lifted it over his head following a 2-1 victory against Calgary in Game 7, proclaiming the Lightning as champions of the hockey world. It was a night that seems so fresh in the minds of many, but feels like it happened a generation ago.

"I did kind of know that it's been five years, but it seems like it was long ago. ... Every year at this time, I think about it from time to time," Vinny Lecavalier said. "It feels like it wasn't that long ago, in some ways, and I can tell you, it never gets old when I start thinking about it."

So much has changed since that night. The team has changed ownership, the head coach and his staff have all been fired, the general manager was let go and the team's fortunes on the ice have seen the team back to the bottom.

The names of so many prominent players of that team - Ruslan Fedotenko, Brad Richards, Nikolai Khabibulin, Tim Taylor, Coach John Tortorella - will live on in Lightning lore. Only Marty St. Louis and Lecavalier remain from the 25 players names

"The memories will always be there of what we accomplished," said Richards, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2004 but was traded to the Dallas Stars at the trade deadline in 2008. "But as far as them being fresh, they are not as much any more."

When the Cup was hoisted high above the ice inside the St. Pete Times Forum five years ago, it felt like it would be the start of an era, the ushering in of a Sunbelt dynasty. Richards and Lecavalier were 24 years old, St. Louis was a league scoring champion and MVP, Dan Boyle was on the cusp of becoming a premier defenseman and Khabibulin was the franchise goaltender capable of backstopping future playoff runs.

With a payroll around $33 million, the Lightning were the shining example of a non-traditional, southern market franchise the league held high for everyone to see. Tampa Bay was the antithesis to large-spending teams such as Toronto, Philadelphia and the New York Rangers.

The Lightning were primed to be perennial contenders. With most of the key members of the championship team under contract the next season, talk of a repeat was relevant.

But next season never happened. Instead, the lockout season of 2004-05 wiped out the Lightning's plans for a championship replay and derailed the franchise's path to continued success.

The new collective bargaining agreement between the league and the NHL Players' Association included a salary cap. The new collective bargaining agreement also wiped a year off player contracts and allowed for free agency at a younger age.

All of a sudden, Lecavalier and Richards were to become unrestricted free agents years earlier than expected. Khabibulin, who had his contract option picked up for the 2004-05 season, was now an unrestricted free agent. St. Louis and Boyle were restricted free agents deserving major raises.

By the time hockey resumed, Khabibulin bolted for Chicago and rule changes meant Tampa Bay's up-tempo style of play was left exposed without the Bulin Wall providing the backbone.

Combined with players walking away during free agency and poor drafting leaving the pipeline dry, the success the franchise built up slowly started to erode. It led to the breakup of the team's core players and, after a run of four consecutive playoff appearances, saw the team finish 30th and 29th, respectively, the past two seasons.

"You look at all the different players from that 2004 team, of course things are so different now. Everybody seems to be playing for different teams or in different countries," Lecavalier said. "That's why it's good we won it when we did. It's something we'll always remember. ... I'm definitely happy we took advantage of the opportunity we had."

Now the Lightning are in the business of trying to recapture that magic and finding a way to get back to that level. It's the task of owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie, along with General Manager Brian Lawton, to carve out the path back to greatness.

It won't include many of those who were on top of the hockey world a short time ago.

"A lot has changed in my life and a lot has changed overall," Richards said.

"Now, I want to create new memories."

Reporter Erik Erlendsson can be reached at (813) 259-7835.

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