Lightning Fever Strikes Tampa Bay

By Gary Nager

Unlike most people I know here in the Tampa Bay area, I’ve been an ice hockey fan for almost 50 years. The first hockey playoff game I ever went to was the deciding Game 3 between the New York Islanders and New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden in 1975, which was the first playoff series the Islanders ever won before they won four Stanley Cups in a row in the 1980s.

I was 16 years old and there was a fight between an Isles fan and a Rangers fan right next to me just after J.P. Parise of the Islanders scored the game- and series-winning goal 13 seconds into overtime. It was the single most exciting thing I had seen in sports (and I saw it in person) at that time — which was just two years after Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973 and four years after Joe Frazier knocked Muhammad Ali down (but not out) in the 15th round of the “Fight of the Century” in 1971.

Both of my sons gave up other sports to play travel and high school ice hockey after the Tampa Bay Lightning won their first Stanley Cup at the end of the 2003-04 season. A lot of kids in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel (and all around the Tampa Bay area, I hear) took up the game that year and I know a whole new batch of youngsters are taking up the game now that the Lightning are back in the finals.*

(*Note-This piece was written the night before the Lightning and the Chicago Black Hawks were set to play Game 5 of their seven-game Stanley Cup Finals series. That series ended after we went to press and before you received this issue in your mailboxes, so I had no way of knowing who won as I’m writing this).

All across the Tampa Bay area, and right here in New Tampa, Stanley Cup fever has been evident everywhere you look. 

From people walking around wearing their Bolts gear every game day (including our own Nikki Bennett {left} and Jill Reilly in the photo, top right) to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn turning the Hillsborough River blue (or, at least, blue-green; above left) to a crowd estimated by some sources as 4,000 and others as 8,000 showing up to a viewing party in Curtis Hixon Park (top left), the Bolts have once again captured the collective imagination of a community not known for being rabid about anything other than football.

Here in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel, where there are about 200 Lightning season ticket holders (according to the team’s PR department), the local restaurants and bars (including Glory Days Grill on Bruce B. Downs Blvd.; above right) definitely saw a growing uptick in business with every Cup game, as even the most casual fans hopped on the Bolts bandwagon.

So, whether they ended up winning or losing this time, the Lightning are a great team that I hope will continue to attract an audience, not only here in New Tampa, but across the Bay area.