Sportsfrog.com

Earlier last week, I wrote about 3/4’s of a post about the Tampa Bay Lightning’s new ownership and the various moves they were making and rumored to make. I never got it finished, and since then the Bolts have not only officially hired their head coach, two assistant coaches, and signed their franchise player to a long-term deal, but they’ve gotten a head start on the free agency period that is supposed to start on July 1st by trading for the rights to three different big name forwards.

It looks like Gary Roberts and Ryan Malone will officially be wearing a bolt sweater next season, but the potential Rolston deal is the one I’m excited about. His style of game is a great model for Steve Stamkos, and Rolston could end up being a great linemate and leader for the recent #1 overall pick.

But with all this spending comes worry. The city of Tampa has been through this kind of thing before; back in 1999 when the Devil Rays went out and spent big money on Greg Vaughn, Jose Canseco, and Fred McGriff. They called the thing ‘The Hit Show’ but the only hit the Rays really got was to the team salary number. Tampa Bay ended up paying Greg Vaughn a lot of money over a few years to sit at home.

Successful championship teams are made by cultivating third and fourth line guys who eventually move on to someplace else (and usually warmer) to be paid like first and second line guys. And the latter is what Tampa has done with the signing of Malone and Roberts.

That doesn’t make them bad moves, it just makes a Tampa native feel nervious.

These are win-now moves for Tampa. It’s easy to spend money. It’s harder to spend money wisely, but at least it appears the new ownership team is making an effort to do that. But what’s really hard, and what separates real winning from losing, is patience and evaluation. These owners are upgrading now because there’s room to – both on the roster and under the salary cap.

And that’s all fine as long as the main focus continues to be long-term. That means staying true to the health of the franchise, and the building of a successful farm system.

The Lightning need only to look across the bay to the post-’Hit Show’, Sternberg, Silverman and Feldman era Rays to see how it can and should be done.