Small Market NHL Teams: Tampa Bay Lightning

The Tampa Bay Lightning are a small market team, but after the next three seasons, they will be well known in Florida.

With Tampa Bay known for its year round warm weather, and sandy beaches, hockey is not a popular sport. However after the next three seasons the Bolts might just be able to make it a well known sport in Florida because of their actions this off-season.

They should be ready to make a run at the cup in the coming years and it all starts from the team building that has begun. This means more fans and more parents enrolling their children into hockey.

In the off season Tampa Bay added more than 10 new players to their roster, most notably Ryan Malone and Steven Stamkos. Stamkos should end up working his way up to the 1st line with Lecavalier and St. Louis.

They also added veteran presence in Gary Roberts and Radim Vrbata. Tampa Bay should have the best season out of all of the small market teams in this series, finishing about 6th or 7th in the conference (check out one of my other articles, '08-'09 Tampa Bay Lightning: Just How Good Will They do?)

So watch for the Lightning to boost the sport of hockey in Florida.

Finally, here are my rankings on small market NHL teams so far (based on projected performance):

1. Tampa Bay

2. Columbus

3. Nashville

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**Next time I will publish part 4 of 6: The Atlanta Thrashers.