people would stop coming to games after 1 season of suck
Not at all. Tampa has had consistently good crowds even during the years of strife pre-Vinik. They've had even better crowds since he took over, but they've always been pretty high on attendance lists. Hell, at one point, they outdrew every 06 team except Montreal.
As a fan that went to a lot of games pre- and post-Vinik I can confidently say A) there are less empty seats on a nightly basis and B) (inflation aside) ticket prices have risen significantly in part because of demand.
If ownership returns to something like OK Hockey and/or the team goes back to 09-level of competition I promise the only sellouts will be O6 games as they were in the olden days. So u/XXXLaCroiXXX I hope this adds to your argument because you are right, attendance was at times laughable.
Not to be the defender of OK Hockey here, but they also managed to own the team during the worst economic time period in the Tampa Bay area since the Great Depression. 2007-2009 were not good years for anyone around here. The Bucs games were regularly blacked out in those years too because they didn't sell out. People just didn't have money and they weren't going to spend it to go watch a terrible hockey team, even if watching young Stamkos was worth the money.
My Dad and I had like a 10 game ticket pack during those days for pretty much the price of one Lightning regular season game today. lol
The only reason my family got so into hockey at the time was because they regularly had 10 tickets for 100 dollars deals, my mom said it was much cheaper to take all of the neighborhood boys to a Lightning game than it was to go to the movies lol.
But yeah I was back in town for Christmas and it was like 180 bucks to go to that Canes game with 3 friends, which don't get me wrong is a far cry from the shittest O6 prices but damn I used to get these games for like half the price a decade ago haha
I feel ya. I was just about out of high school back then or had just graduated, and it was basically just something for us to do on weekends (our 10 games were all weekend home games). I still park in the same area today as we did back then in a lot off of Morgan Street. Back then, it was 5 bucks cash to park in a dirt lot, and now it's a paved parking lot that you have to pay 30 bucks at the kiosk for. Lol
In hindsight, we got to see some pretty cool moments in those games like Hedman's 1st NHL goal and Stammer's 1st hat trick and (1st) 50th goal.
I cherish those memories now, especially since my Dad is gone, but I'd much rather go to a game now watching a good team versus some of the awful hockey we watched back then lmao
thanks for sharing that and sorry to hear about your dad - my dad is kinda in his last years and hockey is something we both share a passion for so I know how that feels
Yeah I paid 40 bucks on Morgan Street for the Canes game too, the modern parking prices makes me yearn for the old days lol. Definitely agree though, was amazing seeing the breakout of players those days, for me I was just happy to be out and watching the games even during loses as long as the youth was doing good!
Sorry for your loss, my partner went through the same thing recently and misses going to Bucs and Bolts games with him, so I'm glad you have some good memories with your dad too 🫂
Fair, but the Great Recession doesn’t explain away their very, very bad decisions. Not to mention the Melrose to Tocchet coaching hires that were just terrible.
i think knowing what we know after the fact of their shadiness and fraudulent activities kinda keeps them from being anyone you'd ever feel sorry for in that scenario - someone had to be the transitional owner from Davidsson to a group with legitimacy - you also just had the annoying shit they brought. Ugly jersey redesign, we signed a bunch of aging players (only Recchi played well for us, which was sad because we wasted one of his last good years and he's one of my all time favorite players), we made some idiotic trades, brought in one of the most inept GM's i've ever seen in Brian Lawton (we had Espo before so that's saying a lot) - we don't even need to touch Barry Melrose - we're lucky that didn't break Stamkos lol
it worked out for us cause we got the best owner in hockey, he bought the team at a steal and has made his money back several times over and now we're a bit of a hockey institution - but i suppose OK needed to bottom shit out enough for this to happen.
ownership is huge - obviously OK Hockey was a disgrace
but let's also not forget about the reliance on Student rush tickets, comped tickets etc
for me it's just ultimately an economic decision - if your team isn't winning and it spreads across multiple seasons, why should we expect a couple/family/etc would be willing to shell out money (it's not cheap for 4 people to go to any sporting event anymore, let alone hockey)
we don't have that insanely rich Toronto fanbase - sure there's plenty of wealthy people in the greater tampa bay area, but most of them didn't get rich by throwing money away watching losing teams suck across multiple seasons
hell, the bucs went from a however many year long season ticket waiting list to massive empty stadium sections in the course of 10 years - if you would have told me in high school when the Bucs first became a force that in 10ish years the stadium would become empty again, I would have laughed
Yeah as a newer bolts and distant thunder fan. Its the ticket prices. I already know a few people that think going to games are too expensive these days, but im also from toronto.
i live in Portland right now (moved away from tampa in my 20s) and Kraken games are nuts - they aren't even that good right now and the prices have gone down a tad from the 1st 2 seasons- but for my gf and I to go to the game in March it's going to be 300+ for decent seats - wtf - i am a project manager, I'm not some millionaire lol
mm - respectfully no - we have missed the playoffs how many times since the owenrship change? so that's not really an accurate litmus - and shit was REALLY bad during the OK Hockey days - wasn't even that long ago. Plus i'm old, I was around in the 90s - I don't think people realize how bad things can get when you rebuild and some markets just can't do it
It’s not the 90’s anymore, we have a dedicated fanbase and team history now. Not saying our sellout streak would continue if we went full rebuild mode, but you’re making it sound like there would be 100 people in the crowd for our games.
bullshit - you just didn't research this - there have been several lockouts - if you're referring to the one after we won our 1st cup, this is false - sorry
I think total summed attendance is fine, plenty of other teams went through bad periods in that time too, and most markets are more traditional than tampa
nobody did - that's just the standard metric used in sports economics and by most attendance databases precisely because it normalizes for number of games played, scheduling quirks, etc
We’re debating fan tolerance and engagement. Average non STM Fans make decisions per game, not per season — so average attendance is the only metric that actually measures what we’re talking about
In the end if you dislike Tampa this is the "best" case scenario; they will probably not win a cup with the core they have but they are also not close enough to end up with a needle mover in the draft. They will stay stuck like this for a really long time.
He's leading the Liiga in scoring, with a 3 point lead over one of his linemates (linemate has 1 more game played) and a 10 point lead over everyone not on his team.
He also plays in Tampere, and could go from there to Tampa with a minimal change in city name
Tampere has been the hockey capital of Finland since the beginning. It has the oldest indoor ice rink in the country and both teams (Ilves and Tappara) have huge amounts of Finnish championships.
Tampere is basicly the capital of Finnish Hockey at this point. Home Arena of Tappara and Ilves (Nokia Arena) holds up to 12 700 capacity for hockey games.. While having the average of about 8000 attendance all the time. When they play against each other. Its usually up to 12 000.
Example November 2025 when they played. There was 12 574 viewers.
For other teams the average is about 3-4k. HIFK is the only team outside of Tampere who has average of 7k+ attendance. They are based in Helsinki.
Helsinki is going to overtake in attendance again next year with Jokerit in Liiga again, with the largest Arena in Finland. And i expect international games to be held there mostly in the future again.
Besides, 7000+ attendance in HIFK games is very impressive considering the capacity of "Nordis". Although i know Liiga counts attendance in tickets sold, rather than tickets read at the door (which Mestis does for example).
Our first round draft selections leave a lot to be desired (besides Vasy) but damn we hit in the later rounds more than any other team it seems like. So if we got another steal here, I'd be okay with it.
Fun fact, if you follow the Connolly trade we got Mitchell Stephens(career AHLer but he played over half the season with us to qualify as a cup winner in the covid bubble year) and Katchouk who was included in the Hagel trade down the line.
Koekkoek was traded for Jan Rutta who played 40 playoff games in our b2b cup runs.
Not star players by any stretch but hard to be mad when they still converted into championship roster players.
yeah i mean this org is big on the ends justifying the means - it's not always going to payoff right (Bjorkstrand, Tanner Jeannot etc) but you never know unless you try
THANK YOU for calling out Bjorkstrand. I like the guy and still hope he can pull it together, but yeah he ain’t it for this team. At the very least he isn’t a massive liability, but we were hoping for a top six guy and he just doesn’t produce- even on the PP1 with Kuch (and this year, Raddysh).
He’s starting to pick it up, but personally I’m giving him a mulligan on his play with us so far.
He had an emergency surgery for compartment syndrome before the playoffs last year that could very well have resulted in the loss of the affected part of his leg and ended his career.
Obviously that doesn’t make him better for us than he’s been, but I certainly don’t blame the guy or JBB since he couldn’t have known this would happen.
i get why JBB wanted him. He produced on shittier teams, his age indicates prime of his career, he has a lot of skill, good skater - so the idea was probably, like, imagine what he can do with Kuch? FWIW I also saw Bjorkstrand when he played for the Winterhawks and he was fucking DOMINANT, especially in the playoffs - he's a lifelong legend in Portland because of it - he could still honestly be that dude who turns it up a bit in the playoffs - but right now I think it's confidence. Kuch stopped passing him the puck on the PP.
But I think sometimes we need to scout active NHLers better before we go all in at the deadline.
In the case of Jeannot, we traded all that away based on his numbers from the prior season - if you go back and watch his entire goal reel on youtube that year, it's a bunch of EN goals and weird angle shit that won't go in 9/10 times. Meaning the 20+ goals was a stat aberration - I would venture that if they watched said video they would have gotten a more accurate reading of his ceiling as a forward (not worth 87 draft picks) - but maybe they did and i'm just being a schmuck
yeah the mindset of like "I'm gonna take the chance on maybe missing out on this generational goalie cause he's Russian and they like to stay over there... but, i HAVE to have this D man who has 2 surgically repaired shoulders!"
cause really, i remember that draft (i'm a THN dork that reads all of the draft issues cover to cover and live in a WHL team market) and the scouting reports on Vasy were all "this dude is incredible, just Russia factor is a concern"
I tend to think that if the guys show up to the draft and put the jersey on, it's a good sign
I would say turning a 6th overall, a 10th overall, and a 5th round pick into two 2nd round picks, a 7th round pick, and Jan Rutta was decidedly a miss.
Koekoek was absolutely not an NHL player - he bounced around, later said he had horrible mental health issues that plagued him during his career etc - feel bad for the guy cause he tore both shoulders before he even made it to the league, but he was a bust. We are lucky we had another pick in that draft (we know who we took and didn't fuck that one up lol)
Connolly was decent but never came near where we drafted him - that 2010 draft wasn't exactly insane but it def had better players we could have drafted at 5th
but i agree that we kinda transitioned into treating the 1st 2 rounds like trade assets - when you crunch the numbers there is a pretty low percentage of even 1st rounders playing 100 NHL games, so I get why we do it
Brett Connolly played 500 games in the NHL and Koekkoek played almost 200. You’re talking like they were horrible picks, they were solid NHL contributors which is really not bad for a non top-3 pick.
500 games isn't what you're hoping for out of a top 5 pick
Koekoek played under 200 games - that was the 2012 draft - one of the strongest in recent history - so yeah, he's a bust in that context absolutely - he was 10th overall - Filip Forsberg was the 11th pick - and thats just one example of a litany of players we could have taken over Koekoek
the irony is that he got us Rutta - who was the definition of invisible in the right way (a good defensive d man you don't notice, which is good - means they don't fuck up)
that was the 2012 draft - one of the strongest in recent history
Sorry, what?? Am I being wooshed here? The top 10 in the 2012 draft were
Nail Yakupov
Ryan Murray
Alex Galchenyuk
Griffen Reinhart
Morgan Rielly
Hampus Lindholm
Matthew Dumba
Derrick Pouliot
Jacob Trouba
Slater Koekkoek
Yes, Forsberg, Hertl, Wilson, Teravainen, Vasilevskiy, Matheson , Skeij were available after that in the first round, but there are good players available in every draft. Overall in terms of points, the three following drafts have contributed more points to the NHL than 2012, despite having one fewer year per player available for every year after 2012.
For sure. Bolts don't have the best first round history with quite a few misses but late round selections and pro scouting seem like they are unmatched
I don't think Edmonton fans are allowed to ask for anything in the front office until the McDiscount ends. Not even with the monkey paw contract of Trent Frederick.
He is a highly skilled player who doesn’t have the size, strength or elusiveness to really succeed at an NHL level. I think he flounders like a lot of guys like him, bouncing between teams trying to give him a chance. Then he will go to Europe to make money. He doesn’t have the skill set to work in the bottom 6 of a team and I think the rest keeps him from being effective in the top 6 at this level.
Yeah our drafting had been generally pretty bad since 2018ish. There's hope that results from guys like goncalves will start to swing that around, but right now our team success is due mostly to success drafting 10-15 years ago + great pro scouting and euro scouting
Benjamin is leading the Liiga in points right now, sitting at 52 points in 37 games. His pace is very impressive.
This is a complete list of players who have had 60+ points in Liiga before turning 21:
Raimo Summanen
Christian Ruuttu
Saku Koivu
That's it.
But, with this I'd also like to point out this pace doesn't mean he's automatically a superstar: Christian Ruuttu got the 60 points in 37 games, Summanen did it in 36. Saku Koivu got 74 points in 45 games. I think most non-Finns here are familiar with Koivu, older people remember Ruuttu, but how about Summanen?
In today's Liiga schedule this trio would amount to:
Summanen: 100 points
Ruuttu: 97 points
Koivu: 99 points
Success in Liiga doesn't automatically translate into superstardom. It can, of course.
I only know Raimo Summanen because of that Hey Burkie episode where Brian Burke told the story of how he used Summanen's name as an alias for a hotel booking for a new coach he was bringing in lol
In the highly unlikely chance that Rautiainen is half the player Koivu was, it’s a great success for a 4th round pick because he was a great top 6 C for a while. It’s very exciting if he does pan out though.
Obviously he never was a superstar but people forget that he had 38 points in 30 games in his sophomore season before suffering his first (of many) knee injury. There's definitively a what-if argument to be made.
Liiga is also down bad lately, not even sure it's ECHL level at the moment.
Not saying this to shit on the player though, he's still having a very impressive season, but I'd be wary. I hope he can play in the NHL or AHL next season.
Liiga has fallen behind SHL and NL sure, but ECHL all star team would get swiped by Tappara in a best of seven series and would have hard time getting into playoffs in Liiga (only the last 4 teams dont make it to playoffs).
Try Tkachuk in Finnish, okay I'm better at Russian surnames and Tkachuk is Ukrainian one, but I still struggled before Google and probably struggle from now on until the end of times.
Liking the team is somewhat understandable (though surprising for a fan of a division rival), but liking the logo? That’s surprising to me. I mean, I like it, but I’m biased. Just didn’t think it was a well-liked logo among the league in general
a little skinny - but honestly, there's just too many people playing the game for everyone to stay on the radar at all times - the radar ain't big enough
Wow colour me surprised NHL teams passing over Europeans/russians/shorter players
Some GMs shouldn’t be allowed to have a say in the draft. I get outside of the top 10 maybe even top 5 and certainly after round 1 it’s crap shoot in who’s gonna be good. But if you’re passing over guys simply because of height or nationality or the competition level. Maybe don’t be a GM. Pasta was passed on because extraliga at the time was a bad competition level and look at Pasta now
I mean, this guy got passed over by everyone, including Tampa, twice and then by everyone but Tampa again. Even in his 3rd draft, Tampa still only took him in the 4th round.
This is a truly under the radar late bloomer, not a guy picked 20th instead of 10th because he’s 5’11 instead of 6’0
No he's not, he's a scouting failure. Picking him in 2023 would give credit to a scouting department as an under the radar pick, or even in 2024 deserves a little credit. You really shouldn't call picking someone who is already very good in Europe an under the radar pick.
Quick comment: this got really long sorry, but I had fun writing it lol
I think you’re misunderstanding what i’m saying.
The comment I replied to was talking about how this was another classic case of guys being undervalued because of their height or their weak draft-year leagues.
Rautiainen wasn’t overlooked for those reasons. This isn’t Lane Hutson dropping to R2 because he’s undersized, or Pasta dropping to late R1 because the Czech league wasn’t considered high quality opposition. This is a player not being on team’s draft boards at all and probably rightfully. I’ll compare him to another Finnish prospect you’re unlikely to have heard of later and show their respective paths.
In retrospect, this was a mistake, but when 32 teams make the same mistake twice and 31 make it a third time (and even the lone team took him in midrounds) it’s a pretty understandable one. I wouldn’t say it’s a scouting failure, I’d say it’s a testament to scouting’s difficulty and, at times, randomness. Rautiainen exploded in his original D+3 year. That happens.
Compare Rautiainen to Jesse Kiiskinen, another promising Finnish prospect. They’re the same age and both originally declared for the 2023 Draft.
In 2022-23, Rautiainen mostly played in the Finnish U20 league, scoring 25 points in 30 games. Kiiskinen had 43 points in 31 games in the same league and appeared in 8 Liiga games as well, notching an assist. Kiiskinen got drafted in the 3rd round and Rautiainen got passed over.
In 2023-24, Rautiainen had 62 points in 36 U20 games with a 3 game stint (and a goal) in Liiga. Those are impressive numbers, but he’s now an overager doing only slightly better than Kiiskinen did AND doing it an entire year older/later. And again, Kiiskinen was only a 3rd round pick. Kiiskinen himself played almost entirely in Liiga and had 10 points in 38 games there (he had 8 u20 games too, in which he had 21 points for nearly 3 points per game). Rautiainen was passed over again in the draft and Kiiskinen was involved in a prospect swap for Christopher Gibson. In fact, a 2nd round pick was attached to Kiiskinen in the swap (this was the pick attached to Walman immediately after, which gained far more attention). So even at ~3ppg in a D+1 year in U20 and spending time in Liiga, Kiiskinen still wasn’t view as super valuable. It’s not shocking that Rautiainen was passed over again.
In 2024-25, Kiiskinen had 44 points in 46 Liiga games and shot into the “top prospects you’ve never heard of” conversation. Rautiainen had 33 points in 50 games and finally got drafted in the midrounds.
Now, in their original D+3 years, Kiiskinen slowed down slightly, with 19 points in 34 Liiga games so far and Rautiainen exploded to 52 points in 37 games so far.
All this to say, years and years of data showed that Kiiskinen was a significantly better prospect that Rautiainen (and even Kiiskinen wasn’t treated as anything super special) only for Rautiainen to take an absolutely ridiculous leap over 3 years after he originally declared for the draft.
Kiiskinen was an early 3rd. The fact that no one was willing to spend a 7th on a guy doing what you would hope your 2nd round picks were doing is a scouting failure.
![[Ellis] Benjamin Rautiainen was passed over twice at the NHL Draft, but the Tampa Bay Lightning took him in the fourth round last season. He's currently tracking for 83 points in Liiga. No U-21 player has ever broken past 80, and that would be one of the best outputs in league history.](https://i.redd.it/eikmgz409ddg1.jpeg){kind=link}
Yo, can Tampa get old with bare cupboards already?
Sincerely,
The rest of the Atlantic
rebuilds are for amateurs - stocking your team as you go is the way you keep fans around in a non trad market like Tampa
we can't afford to rebuild in the regular sense of the word - people would stop coming to games after 1 season of suck
Not at all. Tampa has had consistently good crowds even during the years of strife pre-Vinik. They've had even better crowds since he took over, but they've always been pretty high on attendance lists. Hell, at one point, they outdrew every 06 team except Montreal.
It’s hot outside, A/C good
The Vegas model.
"Tampa has had consistently good crowds even during the years of strife pre-Vinik."
i implore you to look at their attendance pre Vinnik and re-think that statement
As a fan that went to a lot of games pre- and post-Vinik I can confidently say A) there are less empty seats on a nightly basis and B) (inflation aside) ticket prices have risen significantly in part because of demand.
If ownership returns to something like OK Hockey and/or the team goes back to 09-level of competition I promise the only sellouts will be O6 games as they were in the olden days. So u/XXXLaCroiXXX I hope this adds to your argument because you are right, attendance was at times laughable.
Not to be the defender of OK Hockey here, but they also managed to own the team during the worst economic time period in the Tampa Bay area since the Great Depression. 2007-2009 were not good years for anyone around here. The Bucs games were regularly blacked out in those years too because they didn't sell out. People just didn't have money and they weren't going to spend it to go watch a terrible hockey team, even if watching young Stamkos was worth the money.
My Dad and I had like a 10 game ticket pack during those days for pretty much the price of one Lightning regular season game today. lol
The only reason my family got so into hockey at the time was because they regularly had 10 tickets for 100 dollars deals, my mom said it was much cheaper to take all of the neighborhood boys to a Lightning game than it was to go to the movies lol. But yeah I was back in town for Christmas and it was like 180 bucks to go to that Canes game with 3 friends, which don't get me wrong is a far cry from the shittest O6 prices but damn I used to get these games for like half the price a decade ago haha
I feel ya. I was just about out of high school back then or had just graduated, and it was basically just something for us to do on weekends (our 10 games were all weekend home games). I still park in the same area today as we did back then in a lot off of Morgan Street. Back then, it was 5 bucks cash to park in a dirt lot, and now it's a paved parking lot that you have to pay 30 bucks at the kiosk for. Lol
In hindsight, we got to see some pretty cool moments in those games like Hedman's 1st NHL goal and Stammer's 1st hat trick and (1st) 50th goal.
I cherish those memories now, especially since my Dad is gone, but I'd much rather go to a game now watching a good team versus some of the awful hockey we watched back then lmao
thanks for sharing that and sorry to hear about your dad - my dad is kinda in his last years and hockey is something we both share a passion for so I know how that feels
Yeah I paid 40 bucks on Morgan Street for the Canes game too, the modern parking prices makes me yearn for the old days lol. Definitely agree though, was amazing seeing the breakout of players those days, for me I was just happy to be out and watching the games even during loses as long as the youth was doing good!
Sorry for your loss, my partner went through the same thing recently and misses going to Bucs and Bolts games with him, so I'm glad you have some good memories with your dad too 🫂
Fair, but the Great Recession doesn’t explain away their very, very bad decisions. Not to mention the Melrose to Tocchet coaching hires that were just terrible.
that's fair
i think knowing what we know after the fact of their shadiness and fraudulent activities kinda keeps them from being anyone you'd ever feel sorry for in that scenario - someone had to be the transitional owner from Davidsson to a group with legitimacy - you also just had the annoying shit they brought. Ugly jersey redesign, we signed a bunch of aging players (only Recchi played well for us, which was sad because we wasted one of his last good years and he's one of my all time favorite players), we made some idiotic trades, brought in one of the most inept GM's i've ever seen in Brian Lawton (we had Espo before so that's saying a lot) - we don't even need to touch Barry Melrose - we're lucky that didn't break Stamkos lol
it worked out for us cause we got the best owner in hockey, he bought the team at a steal and has made his money back several times over and now we're a bit of a hockey institution - but i suppose OK needed to bottom shit out enough for this to happen.
ownership is huge - obviously OK Hockey was a disgrace
but let's also not forget about the reliance on Student rush tickets, comped tickets etc
for me it's just ultimately an economic decision - if your team isn't winning and it spreads across multiple seasons, why should we expect a couple/family/etc would be willing to shell out money (it's not cheap for 4 people to go to any sporting event anymore, let alone hockey)
we don't have that insanely rich Toronto fanbase - sure there's plenty of wealthy people in the greater tampa bay area, but most of them didn't get rich by throwing money away watching losing teams suck across multiple seasons
hell, the bucs went from a however many year long season ticket waiting list to massive empty stadium sections in the course of 10 years - if you would have told me in high school when the Bucs first became a force that in 10ish years the stadium would become empty again, I would have laughed
well - it happened - i didn't end up laughing lol
Shit, I didn't know ticket prices had risen so much in Tampa. That's usually a sign of a solid fanbase.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/202635/fan-cost-index-of-the-national-hockey-league/
Those fucking US dollars for two canadian teams at the top. I cry...
Yeah as a newer bolts and distant thunder fan. Its the ticket prices. I already know a few people that think going to games are too expensive these days, but im also from toronto.
i live in Portland right now (moved away from tampa in my 20s) and Kraken games are nuts - they aren't even that good right now and the prices have gone down a tad from the 1st 2 seasons- but for my gf and I to go to the game in March it's going to be 300+ for decent seats - wtf - i am a project manager, I'm not some millionaire lol
Is that in the nose bleeds for those prices?
I actually went to the kraken game after yanni got traded lol. I picked that game specifically to see him.
mm - respectfully no - we have missed the playoffs how many times since the owenrship change? so that's not really an accurate litmus - and shit was REALLY bad during the OK Hockey days - wasn't even that long ago. Plus i'm old, I was around in the 90s - I don't think people realize how bad things can get when you rebuild and some markets just can't do it
It’s not the 90’s anymore, we have a dedicated fanbase and team history now. Not saying our sellout streak would continue if we went full rebuild mode, but you’re making it sound like there would be 100 people in the crowd for our games.
100 people no, nor did I ever say that it would get that low - but OK hockey era wasn't during the 90s and our attendance got quite low
and again a rebuild isn't a 1 year ordeal - that's a retool
a rebuild is several years of losing - that would have major repercussions in tampa
LOL
This is false, Tampa has top ten attendance since the lockout and we were not great for most of the first ten years of that
bullshit - you just didn't research this - there have been several lockouts - if you're referring to the one after we won our 1st cup, this is false - sorry
https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph_season.php?lid=NHL1927&sid=2010
I'm talking total summed attendance since 2005
that's not what you would use to determine our attendance if we were a consistent lottery pick team
you'd have to find recent examples of us sucking shit and how the average attendance across the season goes
Who made you the arbiter of metric choice lol
I think total summed attendance is fine, plenty of other teams went through bad periods in that time too, and most markets are more traditional than tampa
nobody did - that's just the standard metric used in sports economics and by most attendance databases precisely because it normalizes for number of games played, scheduling quirks, etc
Every team would play the same amount of regular season home games over that stretch lol
There's no need to normalize
We’re debating fan tolerance and engagement. Average non STM Fans make decisions per game, not per season — so average attendance is the only metric that actually measures what we’re talking about
It's always funny when the word metric is being bought on North America when talking about, well metrics 😀
i don't have my flair up - but you really don't want to talk to me lol - i'm not your ally :D
BRISBOIS "we did the math and this isnt to many picks for jeannot"
In the voice of Red from Shawshank
" but those were tampa bay lightening picks, they missed out on 6 superstars that day"
This was the “Detroit model” up until recently
In the end if you dislike Tampa this is the "best" case scenario; they will probably not win a cup with the core they have but they are also not close enough to end up with a needle mover in the draft. They will stay stuck like this for a really long time.
I am biased but Tampa is 2nd for Stanley Cup odds according to betting odds, the Athletic, and Moneypuck.
With a weaker Florida i certainly dont think its impossible
THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT
I respectfully submit: Yes we can
This made me snort 😆
He's leading the Liiga in scoring, with a 3 point lead over one of his linemates (linemate has 1 more game played) and a 10 point lead over everyone not on his team.
He also plays in Tampere, and could go from there to Tampa with a minimal change in city name
Tampere Bere Lightnere
https://preview.redd.it/t1z56vsvbddg1.jpeg?width=402&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87bf78dfdcebb4b50785b0d9156ebad18b025bec
🎷🐓♋️
image
Old…meme…alright young blood
https://i.redd.it/f6gv54stoddg1.gif
🎷🐓♋️
Alright, whippersnappers
God it's been years since I last saw this
And yet still, the first thing that came to my mind, was one word: ermahgerd.
It's an older meme sir but it checks out
99% climate change, 1% name change
He actually plays for Tappara, the team is located in Tampere thou. Ilves is another team from that city
Tampere can have 2 teams in Finland's top league and Toronto only has 1 NHL team? Crazy
Tampere has been the hockey capital of Finland since the beginning. It has the oldest indoor ice rink in the country and both teams (Ilves and Tappara) have huge amounts of Finnish championships.
I think they lost it in the 90s. Jokerit and TPS were dominating heavily, and it was Kärpät from Oulu mainly in the 00 up to 2015.
Then Tappara started dominating again
Tampere is basicly the capital of Finnish Hockey at this point. Home Arena of Tappara and Ilves (Nokia Arena) holds up to 12 700 capacity for hockey games.. While having the average of about 8000 attendance all the time. When they play against each other. Its usually up to 12 000.
Example November 2025 when they played. There was 12 574 viewers.
For other teams the average is about 3-4k. HIFK is the only team outside of Tampere who has average of 7k+ attendance. They are based in Helsinki.
Helsinki is going to overtake in attendance again next year with Jokerit in Liiga again, with the largest Arena in Finland. And i expect international games to be held there mostly in the future again.
Besides, 7000+ attendance in HIFK games is very impressive considering the capacity of "Nordis". Although i know Liiga counts attendance in tickets sold, rather than tickets read at the door (which Mestis does for example).
Forgout about L.A.H.T.I Finland's Chicago, shit that didn't sit well, well 😀
Edit. And heard Helsinki is actually their suburban so does that make Bay City the capital of Finland?
Our first round draft selections leave a lot to be desired (besides Vasy) but damn we hit in the later rounds more than any other team it seems like. So if we got another steal here, I'd be okay with it.
a lot of those bad 1st rounders were under the Yzer-regime tho
Brett Connolly? Slater Koekoek? He really liked taking guys who missed a bunch of time to injury
Fun fact, if you follow the Connolly trade we got Mitchell Stephens(career AHLer but he played over half the season with us to qualify as a cup winner in the covid bubble year) and Katchouk who was included in the Hagel trade down the line.
Koekkoek was traded for Jan Rutta who played 40 playoff games in our b2b cup runs.
Not star players by any stretch but hard to be mad when they still converted into championship roster players.
yeah i mean this org is big on the ends justifying the means - it's not always going to payoff right (Bjorkstrand, Tanner Jeannot etc) but you never know unless you try
THANK YOU for calling out Bjorkstrand. I like the guy and still hope he can pull it together, but yeah he ain’t it for this team. At the very least he isn’t a massive liability, but we were hoping for a top six guy and he just doesn’t produce- even on the PP1 with Kuch (and this year, Raddysh).
He’s starting to pick it up, but personally I’m giving him a mulligan on his play with us so far.
He had an emergency surgery for compartment syndrome before the playoffs last year that could very well have resulted in the loss of the affected part of his leg and ended his career.
Obviously that doesn’t make him better for us than he’s been, but I certainly don’t blame the guy or JBB since he couldn’t have known this would happen.
i get why JBB wanted him. He produced on shittier teams, his age indicates prime of his career, he has a lot of skill, good skater - so the idea was probably, like, imagine what he can do with Kuch? FWIW I also saw Bjorkstrand when he played for the Winterhawks and he was fucking DOMINANT, especially in the playoffs - he's a lifelong legend in Portland because of it - he could still honestly be that dude who turns it up a bit in the playoffs - but right now I think it's confidence. Kuch stopped passing him the puck on the PP.
But I think sometimes we need to scout active NHLers better before we go all in at the deadline.
In the case of Jeannot, we traded all that away based on his numbers from the prior season - if you go back and watch his entire goal reel on youtube that year, it's a bunch of EN goals and weird angle shit that won't go in 9/10 times. Meaning the 20+ goals was a stat aberration - I would venture that if they watched said video they would have gotten a more accurate reading of his ceiling as a forward (not worth 87 draft picks) - but maybe they did and i'm just being a schmuck
Crazy thinking how Koekoek was drafted before Vasy in the same draft… 1 HOFer out of 2 picks ain’t bad
yeah the mindset of like "I'm gonna take the chance on maybe missing out on this generational goalie cause he's Russian and they like to stay over there... but, i HAVE to have this D man who has 2 surgically repaired shoulders!"
cause really, i remember that draft (i'm a THN dork that reads all of the draft issues cover to cover and live in a WHL team market) and the scouting reports on Vasy were all "this dude is incredible, just Russia factor is a concern"
I tend to think that if the guys show up to the draft and put the jersey on, it's a good sign
To be fair, all those players were traded away and they were NHL players, so was that really a miss?
I would say turning a 6th overall, a 10th overall, and a 5th round pick into two 2nd round picks, a 7th round pick, and Jan Rutta was decidedly a miss.
Koekoek was absolutely not an NHL player - he bounced around, later said he had horrible mental health issues that plagued him during his career etc - feel bad for the guy cause he tore both shoulders before he even made it to the league, but he was a bust. We are lucky we had another pick in that draft (we know who we took and didn't fuck that one up lol)
Connolly was decent but never came near where we drafted him - that 2010 draft wasn't exactly insane but it def had better players we could have drafted at 5th
but i agree that we kinda transitioned into treating the 1st 2 rounds like trade assets - when you crunch the numbers there is a pretty low percentage of even 1st rounders playing 100 NHL games, so I get why we do it
Which is funny because yzerman seems to have hit on all of his 1st rounders so far in detroit
he's done a lot better there for sure - just, ya know, bit slower of a process
Brett Connolly played 500 games in the NHL and Koekkoek played almost 200. You’re talking like they were horrible picks, they were solid NHL contributors which is really not bad for a non top-3 pick.
500 games isn't what you're hoping for out of a top 5 pick
Koekoek played under 200 games - that was the 2012 draft - one of the strongest in recent history - so yeah, he's a bust in that context absolutely - he was 10th overall - Filip Forsberg was the 11th pick - and thats just one example of a litany of players we could have taken over Koekoek
the irony is that he got us Rutta - who was the definition of invisible in the right way (a good defensive d man you don't notice, which is good - means they don't fuck up)
Sorry, what?? Am I being wooshed here? The top 10 in the 2012 draft were
Nail Yakupov
Ryan Murray
Alex Galchenyuk
Griffen Reinhart
Morgan Rielly
Hampus Lindholm
Matthew Dumba
Derrick Pouliot
Jacob Trouba
Slater Koekkoek
Yes, Forsberg, Hertl, Wilson, Teravainen, Vasilevskiy, Matheson , Skeij were available after that in the first round, but there are good players available in every draft. Overall in terms of points, the three following drafts have contributed more points to the NHL than 2012, despite having one fewer year per player available for every year after 2012.
you're right - i kinda glossed past the top 10 and focused on all of the quality players vs the abject star power
it was def more of a mixed bag draft - i just really fucking couldn't understand the koekoek pick at the time (And still can't)
Rutta and Hedman had some good chemistry during the cup runs
Rutta was really good at the boring side of the game - you need guys like that right?
I think 500 NHL games for a top-5 pick is “decent/acceptable”, right on the cusp of “good” but not quite.
Most forwards with 600+ games were reliable contributors for a decade.
Most forwards with 400-500 games are well-established NHLers and were likely a reasonably effective middle-6 forward.
1st overall pick averages 866 games. 500 games in the NHL for a 5th overall pick is pretty much exactly what I would expect/hope for.
You would likely be the only person I’d ever hear be content with a 15-20 goal scorer with the 5th overall pick
Who needs first round picks when you can just reach into the depths of Finland and find a guy like this
Reminder kucherov was drafted 58th overall
For sure. Bolts don't have the best first round history with quite a few misses but late round selections and pro scouting seem like they are unmatched
And recently they just have traded all the first round picks so it works out.
All part of the dynasty plan
Tampa’s got the best scouts
Its the 90’s wings all over again.
Yzerman must have brought a few along with him to Tampa, and the Bolts opted to hold them when Yzerman left.
Most of them already left with Nill to Dallas back in 2013.
The curse of Ken Holland
Can Edmonton have one? We have no good scouts lol
I don't think Edmonton fans are allowed to ask for anything in the front office until the McDiscount ends. Not even with the monkey paw contract of Trent Frederick.
The mcdiscount was entirely voided by the Frederick contract tbh
Please sir just one cup
no but you can have 2 girls i guess
Best we can do is Corey Perry Blue Balls.
We gave you Howard, is that not enough??
You traded us Howard cause you knew O’Reilly was going to be the better player. Howard’s going to be in Europe in a few years.
I don’t disagree about O’Reilly being better, but saying Howard will be stuck playing in Europe is crazy
He is a highly skilled player who doesn’t have the size, strength or elusiveness to really succeed at an NHL level. I think he flounders like a lot of guys like him, bouncing between teams trying to give him a chance. Then he will go to Europe to make money. He doesn’t have the skill set to work in the bottom 6 of a team and I think the rest keeps him from being effective in the top 6 at this level.
They have managed to draft two NHL players over the last 8 drafts
Yeah our drafting had been generally pretty bad since 2018ish. There's hope that results from guys like goncalves will start to swing that around, but right now our team success is due mostly to success drafting 10-15 years ago + great pro scouting and euro scouting
Why draft when you can just acquire
Benjamin is leading the Liiga in points right now, sitting at 52 points in 37 games. His pace is very impressive.
This is a complete list of players who have had 60+ points in Liiga before turning 21:
That's it.
But, with this I'd also like to point out this pace doesn't mean he's automatically a superstar: Christian Ruuttu got the 60 points in 37 games, Summanen did it in 36. Saku Koivu got 74 points in 45 games. I think most non-Finns here are familiar with Koivu, older people remember Ruuttu, but how about Summanen?
In today's Liiga schedule this trio would amount to:
Success in Liiga doesn't automatically translate into superstardom. It can, of course.
and one who got close to 60 before turning 21 was Teemu Selanne. 58 Points in 42 Games
I only know Raimo Summanen because of that Hey Burkie episode where Brian Burke told the story of how he used Summanen's name as an alias for a hotel booking for a new coach he was bringing in lol
I mean, none of those guys were superstars.
Yeah, that was kinda the whole point I was making.
In the highly unlikely chance that Rautiainen is half the player Koivu was, it’s a great success for a 4th round pick because he was a great top 6 C for a while. It’s very exciting if he does pan out though.
Habs Fans might think differently of Koivu :D
I mean, he was the ultimate nice guy, but deep down inside they have to know the truth.
Also, they booed him once.
Obviously he never was a superstar but people forget that he had 38 points in 30 games in his sophomore season before suffering his first (of many) knee injury. There's definitively a what-if argument to be made.
Liiga is also down bad lately, not even sure it's ECHL level at the moment.
Not saying this to shit on the player though, he's still having a very impressive season, but I'd be wary. I hope he can play in the NHL or AHL next season.
Liiga has fallen behind SHL and NL sure, but ECHL all star team would get swiped by Tappara in a best of seven series and would have hard time getting into playoffs in Liiga (only the last 4 teams dont make it to playoffs).
They didn't own the pick but Tampa traded their 2026 4th when he was still available at #108. Kinda similar to how they got Point in 2014
Oh hey look guys Tampa is doing it again.
income taxes strike again
I chortled
this is why i love being a bolts fan
standard Lightning scouting W
a good summary of his playstyle would be a 6 foot pass first winger with good vision. So basically a 20 year old budget kucherov
Tampa Bay is such a well-run organization. They could find talent in any corner of the world that other teams would miss.
Props to them.
No player has even hit 70pts in that league irregardless of age in the last decade. 80 pts by a 20 year old would be wild.
this is a rare find isn't it, a Finnish Benjamin ?
Yeah but the J is a y sound so it's pronounced ben-yamin
Ben-yah-min or Ben-yah-meen? Genuine question
First one. Finnish letters are pronounced exactly the same way every time, there's only one i so it's a short sound
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Also to add, there's no H sound in Finnish J so remove that from the first one and it's super super accurate
My favorite was Christopher Gibson, Finnish goalie
Brad lambert is also Finnish
Not really. Around 15000 of them. Gained a lot of popularity lately however. 0,6% of the children born named so on average during the last 10 years.
his last name is really annoying to spell - seems like it has 1 extra vowel or something
Try Tkachuk in Finnish, okay I'm better at Russian surnames and Tkachuk is Ukrainian one, but I still struggled before Google and probably struggle from now on until the end of times.
ah wait you're a european based panthers fan? ok - i guess you guys kinda get a pass lol
I wish the Avs could draft like this in the later rounds
Damn I like Tampa and their logo is cool as hell, I know I'm not supposed to but I'm foreign so kill me if you can.
Liking the team is somewhat understandable (though surprising for a fan of a division rival), but liking the logo? That’s surprising to me. I mean, I like it, but I’m biased. Just didn’t think it was a well-liked logo among the league in general
Don’t worry it’s not lmao
Lol okay I thought so.
Also, side note- I was happy to downvote that one Panther fan on your behalf. Love seeing you pop up in this sub’s many threads
Hahaha, it’s all fun and games. Hopefully they see it that way too.
The old logo with 2 fonts was sick, the gatorade logo was fine, current one sucks
Fun fact: Barkov played in Tampere Tappara team. Benjamin Rautiainen plays also in that Tappara team.
So did Laine
FFS they got another Kucherov, didn't they..
More Finns more wins
Dammit Tampa! Get old and eventually stop making the playoffs please?
wasn’t expecting a sharks fan to be saying this 😭
They're always there deep in the playoffs, I want new blood.
JBB is playing 4D chess while other gms play checkers by clutching onto overhyped 1st rounders lol
[deleted]
6 foot even according to elite.
a little skinny - but honestly, there's just too many people playing the game for everyone to stay on the radar at all times - the radar ain't big enough
I see
You'd guess wrong
182cm/6foot
Benjamin Rautiainen looks like the next Mattias Norlinder, who looked like the next Nick Lidstrom.
except the don't play the same positions and one of them is Finnish while the other 2 are Swedish aka go back to bed
You're comparing the wrong things.
nah you're just conflating dawg
Wow colour me surprised NHL teams passing over Europeans/russians/shorter players
Some GMs shouldn’t be allowed to have a say in the draft. I get outside of the top 10 maybe even top 5 and certainly after round 1 it’s crap shoot in who’s gonna be good. But if you’re passing over guys simply because of height or nationality or the competition level. Maybe don’t be a GM. Pasta was passed on because extraliga at the time was a bad competition level and look at Pasta now
I mean, this guy got passed over by everyone, including Tampa, twice and then by everyone but Tampa again. Even in his 3rd draft, Tampa still only took him in the 4th round.
This is a truly under the radar late bloomer, not a guy picked 20th instead of 10th because he’s 5’11 instead of 6’0
No he's not, he's a scouting failure. Picking him in 2023 would give credit to a scouting department as an under the radar pick, or even in 2024 deserves a little credit. You really shouldn't call picking someone who is already very good in Europe an under the radar pick.
Quick comment: this got really long sorry, but I had fun writing it lol
I think you’re misunderstanding what i’m saying.
The comment I replied to was talking about how this was another classic case of guys being undervalued because of their height or their weak draft-year leagues.
Rautiainen wasn’t overlooked for those reasons. This isn’t Lane Hutson dropping to R2 because he’s undersized, or Pasta dropping to late R1 because the Czech league wasn’t considered high quality opposition. This is a player not being on team’s draft boards at all and probably rightfully. I’ll compare him to another Finnish prospect you’re unlikely to have heard of later and show their respective paths.
In retrospect, this was a mistake, but when 32 teams make the same mistake twice and 31 make it a third time (and even the lone team took him in midrounds) it’s a pretty understandable one. I wouldn’t say it’s a scouting failure, I’d say it’s a testament to scouting’s difficulty and, at times, randomness. Rautiainen exploded in his original D+3 year. That happens.
Compare Rautiainen to Jesse Kiiskinen, another promising Finnish prospect. They’re the same age and both originally declared for the 2023 Draft.
In 2022-23, Rautiainen mostly played in the Finnish U20 league, scoring 25 points in 30 games. Kiiskinen had 43 points in 31 games in the same league and appeared in 8 Liiga games as well, notching an assist. Kiiskinen got drafted in the 3rd round and Rautiainen got passed over.
In 2023-24, Rautiainen had 62 points in 36 U20 games with a 3 game stint (and a goal) in Liiga. Those are impressive numbers, but he’s now an overager doing only slightly better than Kiiskinen did AND doing it an entire year older/later. And again, Kiiskinen was only a 3rd round pick. Kiiskinen himself played almost entirely in Liiga and had 10 points in 38 games there (he had 8 u20 games too, in which he had 21 points for nearly 3 points per game). Rautiainen was passed over again in the draft and Kiiskinen was involved in a prospect swap for Christopher Gibson. In fact, a 2nd round pick was attached to Kiiskinen in the swap (this was the pick attached to Walman immediately after, which gained far more attention). So even at ~3ppg in a D+1 year in U20 and spending time in Liiga, Kiiskinen still wasn’t view as super valuable. It’s not shocking that Rautiainen was passed over again.
In 2024-25, Kiiskinen had 44 points in 46 Liiga games and shot into the “top prospects you’ve never heard of” conversation. Rautiainen had 33 points in 50 games and finally got drafted in the midrounds.
Now, in their original D+3 years, Kiiskinen slowed down slightly, with 19 points in 34 Liiga games so far and Rautiainen exploded to 52 points in 37 games so far.
All this to say, years and years of data showed that Kiiskinen was a significantly better prospect that Rautiainen (and even Kiiskinen wasn’t treated as anything super special) only for Rautiainen to take an absolutely ridiculous leap over 3 years after he originally declared for the draft.
Kiiskinen was an early 3rd. The fact that no one was willing to spend a 7th on a guy doing what you would hope your 2nd round picks were doing is a scouting failure.