The Tampa Bay Lighting has signed a three year contract amounting to $2.625 million to rope in the No 1 pick in the NHL draft, Steven Stamkos, into their team. Stamkos is determined to make the most of this opportunity and wants to make it big this forthcoming NHL season. He said that he will be working with his new teammates at the practice camp and will be able to work on developing an excellent rapport with the players of the Lightning team. He feels that he is ready for the big challenge of NHL and will be able to prove his detractors wrong. There is no doubt that there will be huge rush for tickets by the Lightning fans to the upcoming season.

The Tampa Bay Lightning has made their first selection in the first round of NHL Draft last Friday when they picked up center player Steven Stamkos as their numero uno pick. The Lightning general manager Jay Feaster appreciated the efforts of the new ownership chairperson, Oren Koules, in picking up 18 year old Stamkos into the Lightning squad. Stamkos is also very happy to be representing Tampa Bay in the NHL season ahead and is elated to be among the likes of star players like Vincent Lecavalier. The new hockey season is going to a great sporting extravaganza and there is no doubt that fans will buying tickets to watch their favorite teams perform.

John Tortorella, who was reigning as the hockey coach of Tampa Bay Lightning from 2001, was removed from his office before the termination of his contract. The General Manager of

Tampa Bay, Jay Feaster was finding it difficult to remove him from the post as he was the only coach to take the team to win its one and only Stanley Cup, which helped in

Tampa Bay fans purchasing many tickets to witness the games. Tortorella took over the team while it was going through a bad phase and was able to completely change the attitude of the players and bring them to the level of match winners in NHL in three years time. There are speculations that Barry Melrose would be the successor of Tortorella.

Ilya Kovalchuk’s real accomplishment came when his awesome performance in Tampa Bay cracked the Top 3 on SportsCenter’s top plays. He is definitely doing something special getting a hockey match into the ESPN highlight mix on a college football Saturday. That was perfect, and everybody after the match was talking about how it all started in Ottawa. The club, right now, feels like they can come back on anyone. A breakdown by The Falconer points out that Kovalchuk contributed to 54.3 percent of Atlanta points this year, more than any other player in the League.

Jaromir Jagr scored with only 9:15 remaining yesterday night to help the Rangers to a 3-1 win over Tampa Bay. Former Wing Shanahan connected for another power-play goal a couple of minutes later, with assists from Jaromir Jagr and Chris Drury, to seal the Rangers’ 2nd win in 7 matches (2-4-1). Dawes scored the 1st for New York, who have an NHL-low ninteen goals in eleven games. Lecavalier scored his 9th on a 2nd-period penalty shot for Tampa Bay– 5-0-1 at home, 0-4 on the road.