BT's 2008-09 NHL Season Preview: Tampa Bay Lightning

Challenging—and mentoring—Smith will be Olaf Kolzig, who after years of tending the twine in Washington, will give the sand beaches a shot before calling it a career. The only problem is Kolzig won’t be riding off into the sunset.

The past few seasons, Kolzig had been fairly average behind a team experiencing growing pains in Washington. Although his stats have improved the past few seasons, it’s still not ideal. When a 38-year-old goalie has seen his goals-against average drop from 3.53 to 3.00 to 2.91 in three years, yet has just posted his worst save percentage (.892) in fourteen years, one has to wonder if he can even be effective as a backup in such a offense-first system.

And then to top it all off, Karri Ramo is going to be gunning for playing time too, so that he can establish himself in the North American game.

But to really top it off? They added Mike Vernon to the mix too. Well, he’s on the management side of things, not contending for a goalie job, and it doesn’t look like he’s coming out of retirement—yet.

So I really don’t know what to think anymore.

 

So what does it all mean?

All right, I guess it’s time to try to make sense of it all. With the depth of talent up front, the Lightning could easily have four 70-point guys in Prospal, Stamkos, St. Louis, and Lecavalier. Malone could hit 50 points once again, or even 60—depending if Stamkos is good for that 70 of his own or not.

Vrbata could score 30 goals and rack up 60 points, while Recchi, Roberts, Ouellet, and Jokinen could have 40 each at least. It all depends who they play with.

The defense will put up some point and move the puck, but they’re going to be weak in their own end and give up a lot of shots—which won’t bode well for Smith, Ramo, or Kolzig.

Kolzig is getting too old to consistently steal games, and I don’t think Smith or Ramo have the ability yet.

Scoring six or seven goals a game is great—but only if you’re not giving up eight or nine.

Prediction: Fourth in Southeast

 

There you have it, the most...active team in the NHL this offseason is set to begin the season with enough forwards to...um...well, the phrase 'Baker's Dozen plus five' comes to mind.

There's depth, and then there's girth. The Tampa Bay Lightning are overweight with forwards—a solution to a problem that may turn itself into a whole new problem this season.

After all, there's only so much ice time to go around.

 

Bryan Thiel is a Senior Writer for Bleacher Report and an NHL Community Leader. If you want to get in contact with Bryan, you can do so through his profile. You can also check out his previous work in his archives.

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