This afternoon the Blues begin a Florida road trip with a stop in Tampa. They will be looking to springboard off of the home win against Edmonton and extend their one-game winning streak. The challenge will be considerably greater with the Bolts, of course. It's one thing to beat the worst team in the conference, but it's something else altogether when it is the 2nd seed in the East, and SE Division leader. If the young players on the Blues think that they can approach this game the same way, they are in for quite a surprise eye-opener shock...
Shock The Monkey / Peter Gabriel
The Enemy: The Tampa Bay team has had a remarkable rebound. From winning the last Stanley Cup before the lockout, they dropped to finishes of 8th, 7th, 15th, 14th, and 12th in the Eastern Conference since then. Now, they are first in their division, 2nd in the Eastern Conference. They've gone from owners who used the team as a marketing tool for their "day jobs" and hiring Barry Melrose as head coach to now - a stable ownership and a smart hockey guy as GM. They are an exciting team to watch, first with Martin St. Louis (20G/42A) and Vincent Lecavalier (8G/16A), and even more so now with Steven Stamkos (leads the team league with 39G/29A). The only weak spot for the Lightning has been goaltending. To address this, they picked up Dwayne Roloson from the Islanders. Since joining at the beginning of the calender year, Rollie has gone 8-4-0, with four shutouts (including 2 of the last three games). During his time in Tampa, he has posted a 2.21 GAA and a .930 SV%. As a team, they won 6 in a row before losing to the Caps on Friday. This ain't the Tampa Bay team we're used to.
Further Reading:
Blues vs Lightning coverage
The puck drops at 2:00 PM St Louis time, with broadcasts at the usual outlets: FSMW for TV, KMOX for radio. Make sure you have a web feed identified ahead of time, since there's been a recent crackdown (This article has a helpful clue). The GDT thread should come along shortly beforehand. Until then, this is your pregame warmup and pre-party. Meet here, trade Super Bowl picks, muse over favorite Super Bowl ads of days past, and enjoy this perfect merge of music and lightning:
ArcAttack plays Iron Man (Black Sabbath) (via renatomxz)
LGB!
-CrossCheckRaise