The Crosby Show

Could the folks at TSN be bigger horses' asses? Pardon my frustration but I'm afraid if I hear one more glowing review of Sidney Crosby, I may quite possibly shoot someone.

It's not that I don't believe he's talented. I'm sure he is. But enough is enough already. Yes, he gets to be Super Mario's protege. And that's wonderful. For him. And the Penguins. As a Lightning fan, I couldn't really care less.

So obviously Pittsburgh snapped up Crosby with the first pick. The big question of the draft was who would go next. The Mighty Ducks answered that question with Bobby Ryan. And he was followed by Jack Johnson for Carolina's third overall pick. Two Americans in the in the top three. Impressive.

Benoit Pouliot, Carey Price, Gilbert Brule, and Jack Skille rounded off the top seven for the 2005 draft. Then San Jose traded up to spot No. 8 so they could snatch up a 26th-ranked prospect. Yeah, I'm not finding the logic behind their decision either.

But again, it doesn't affect me or my Bolts. What does are our particular picks. They were Vladimir Mihalik, Radek Smolenak, Chris Lawrence, Marek Bartanus, Blair Jones, Stanislav Lascek, Marek Kvapil, Kevin Beech, and John Wessbecker.

Beech is a goalie, Mihalik and Wessbecker are blue-liners, and the rest are forwards. Wessbecker is the only American and since he was the 225th out of 230 picks, I'm guessing he won't ever really see NHL action in this life. He'll just have a new line for his resume: NHL Draft Choice.

So with the draft being over, we now have training camp to look forward to. But that's still two months away. In the meantime, the Lightning desperately need to sign some of their superstars. Signing Ruslan Fedotenko today and Tim Taylor and Martin Cibak two days ago is a good start.

Now it's big fish time. Marty. Vinny. Khabby. Boyle. Stillman. Let's not drag our feet, Jay. Let's get this done.




Temporary Buddies   Ryan, Crosby and Johnson (it sounds like a law firm but it's not) are thrilled right now to be the top three NHL draftees. But wait until the season starts and they have to face each other on the ice. That should be interesting to say the least.