Good bye lightning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. That's not Tampa or St. Pete. It's Orlando.

2. There weren't many empty seats. It could've been that the fans were wearing the same color shirts as the seats.

You're a noles fan, why am I even wasting my breath. JK bro

Let's just talk facts:

• The Lightning were 3rd and 2nd in the NHL in attendance the precious two years and then slipped a bit last year but still were in the top 5-10 spots in a tough year.
• Hockey has 41 home dates to footballs 8. Thus, the Lightning who get close to 20,000 fans over the past three years (call it 19,000 if you wnat but I think it might be closer to 20,000) get way more fans than the Tampa Bucs. Lightning got about 800,000 per year plus two playoff seasons probably added another 60,000 to 80,000 per season. Bucs likely get about 600,000+ per year.
• If football was not such an EVENT business, do you think the stadium would fill up for dreary games in mid-season in the rain when they were losing (say 13 wins and 59 losses) against a weak team from Carolina or whatever???? The football stadium would be empty for such bums.
• The fact that NFL teams get $300 MILLION in TV money and NHL teams get only $2 Million makes hockey look good; it's ability to attract fans to games speaks volumes..41 home dates!!!
• Downtown Tampa would really feel the loss of the Lightning. Downtown tampa really has an atmosphere because of the Lightning. Folks really havew bought into the team and enjoy the games very much and then go out. It is important to workers, families and businesses.

I think this Bucaroo is just scairrrrrreddd the Lightning are going to draft Stamkops and win another Stanley Cup before the Bucs win their second Super Bowl.

Go BUCS!!!!    Go Lightning!  I love those Rays. I predicted they had a shot to win it all on these boards this year. It was a brave staement opening me up to ridicule since I fancy myself a decent baseball fan.

NHL SCORING WAS NOT HIGH LAST YEAR!!!!!

It was 2.76 goals per game per team. That includes empty netters and OT goals (not shootout goals).

Before expansion in the 60's the league typically scored about 2.5 goals per game. In the Gretzky era it would get between 3.5 and 4.0 most years. Before the recent changes, the league dropped to about 3 goals a game and then lower.

The league scoring was NOT HIGH LAST YEAR. That is a false assumption many fans. Not high at all. Only a handful of guys averaged over 1.25 points per game (if that many).

Ranking the sports:

Excitement, bars sports columns    NFL - 10  NHL - 5   MLB -4   NBA-6

Watching: NFL 10   NHL  7  MLB  6   NBA   5

Personal Choice (subjective)    Hockey 9.0  NFL 8.5   MLB  8.0   NBA  6.5

NFL - 29    NHL - 21  MLB - 18.0   NBA - 17.5

I was being kind to basketball. My personal feelings, if I were giveing points woudl be:

• Tampa Lightning - 30 Points!!!!!  Perfect 10's. I like 41 dates - Makes life good! 
•  Tampa Bucs - 29 Points Love the NFL, so exciting.
•  Tampa Rays - 26 points Love MLB and following the kids through the system.
•  NBA - 20 Points    And that is with Howard and a good team!!!!!

Here's my scoring craiginflorida, and I will acually add up the scores correctly

Watching In person: NFL-10, NBA-9, MLB-8.5, NHL-6

Watching on television: NBA-10, NFL-10, MLB-7, NHL-3

Excitment: NFL-10, NBA-8, MLB-7, NHL-2

Here's my scoring:

NFL-30. No sport can even come close. No other sport sells out every game even when a team canb't win a game.

NBA- 27. No other game has the back-and-forth excitement, with any team CAPITALIZING on momentum at any moment.

MLB- 22.5. Baseball is great in the closing innings but is just boring the rest of the way.

NHL- 11. Momentum is in games, just you can't really tell who has it. A team can dominate the whole game and have the score only 2-0. It's a boring product

What are you talking about??? first you say baseball is fun to watch then you go and say you only watch 2 innings. You contradict yourself.