Tampa Bay Lightning Tickets

The Tampa Bay Lightning is a professional ice hockey team based in Tampa, Florida. They play in the National Hockey League. When Tampa was awarded an NHL franchise in 1991, the team's management brought in star power before they had any players. They hired 1970s Boston Bruins star Phil Esposito as president and general manager, his brother Tony, a legendary goaltender, as chief scout and Terry Crisp, who played for the Philadelphia Flyers when they won two Stanley Cups in the mid-1970s, and coached the Calgary Flames to a Stanley Cup in 1989, to stand behind the bench. Finally, in 1998, after losing more than $100 million in six years, Kokusai Green finally found a buyer in insurance tycoon and motivational speaker Art Williams. Like the Japanese, he knew very little about hockey. However, he was very visible and outspoken, and pumped an additional $6 million into the team's payroll to turn it around. He wasted little time clearing away the considerable debt he'd inherited from Kokusai Green. He publicly assured the Espositos that they were safe, but fired them two games into the 1998-99 season. Demers became general manager as well as coach. Williams was widely seen as being in over his head and was an easy target for his NHL colleagues, who called him "Jed Clampett" because of his thick Southern accent and fundamentalist Christian views (he neither smoked nor drank and frequently used terms like "goldangit" and "dadgummit"). Early in the season, the Lightning lost 10 games in a row that effectively ended their season. Some blame Williams for the slide. He named rookie Vincent Lecavalier as team captain--the first known instance in years that a rookie has had this important task. Also, before the first game in the losing streak, against the New York Rangers, he decided to give a pep talk to the team loaded with college football slang and bizarre catchphrases. The Lightning were shelled 10-2. Williams sold the team for $115 million--$2 million less than he'd paid for the team a year earlier--to Detroit Pistons owner Bill Davidson, who had also owned the Detroit Vipers of the now-defunct International Hockey League. Davidson had been one of the bidders for the team in 1998, losing to Williams. Davidson appointed Ron Campbell as team president to handle day-to-day management of the team. Campbell fired Demers, who despite his best efforts was unable to overcome the damage from the Kokusai Green ownership. Campbell persuaded Ottawa Senators general manager Rick Dudley to take over hockey operations in Tampa.