R&R: Overload

I haven't written here in a few days, so things have started to pile up.

The most important bit of news is the re-signing of Vinny Lecavalier. He'll be counting nearly $7 million a year for the next four years with his new Lightning contract. That money could give the Bolts a problem keeping Marty St. Louis, but I'm not that worried. The two guys are equally important and Feaster knows this.

That was on Tuesday. Then today, Tampa Bay made several signings. Jim Campbell of the Islanders and Norm Milley of the Sabres will join the Bolts, if for no other reason than to stock the Falcons. We also re-signed Brian Eklund, who, based on my recollection, has never actually seen NHL ice.

With no more Lightning transactional news to speak of, below is a list of the players who have signed contracts with new teams in the last few days.

• Most notably, Curtis Joseph beat a path out of Detroit to join Wayne Gretzky's Coyotes (if I'm not mistaken, CuJo and Gretzky actually played together in St. Louis);


• Alexander Mogilny is leaving Toronto to return to the Devils, the team he once won a Stanley Cup with;


• Jozef Stumpel will join the Panthers, leaving Los Angeles in the dust;


• Anson Carter also left the Kings to play in Vancouver;


• Curtis Leschyshyn turned down the Sens and is headed back to Denver;


• and Andy Delmore is headed to Hockeytown after leaving the Bruins.

On the other hand, more players than not re-upped with their current teams. Among those players continuing on with their respective clubs are David Aebischer and John-Michael Liles of Colorado, Steve Sullivan of Nashville, Glen Wesley and Josef Vasicek of Carolina, Chris Bourque (son of Ray) and Dainius Zubrus of Washington; Dan Cloutier of Vancouver, Travis Green of Boston, and Radek Martinek of the Islandrs.

We're inching ever closer to that day on the calendar when the Lightning finally return to the ice to defend the Stanley Cup. Technically, October 5 is the opener, but I'm just looking forward to September 19, when they head to Detroit to begin the pre-season. September 24, on the other hand, will be the first Lightning game in Tampa since June 7, 2004.

It's been too long.

Oh, and don't let me forget. Comcast's OLN will be the new home of NHL hockey this season. It will certainly be different. ESPN has been covering hockey as long as I can remember. It should be interesting to see who they get as primary broadcasters.

The Comcast contract provides for airing games on Monday and Tuesday nights as well as the conference finals. I'm sure there will be other games covered. But that we won't know until OLN creates its hockey schedule.

Here on Bright House cable in Tampa, OLN is channel 74. And I can honestly say I've never had any reason to watch it before. In October, it's going to go from one of my least-watched channels to most-watched.

You watch.




Tampa's Hockey Mecca (Space's Perspective)   I got bored last week and, well, ran out of good, relevant hockey pictures. So I managed to find all 30 NHL arenas from space via Google's Maps service. So first things first. This is the Ice Palace. More later.