Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Tickets - Enjoy Lightning Action On Ice

By Author: Al Terry
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Lately, the Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Tickets are in great demand as their fans expect them to perform in the 2008-09 NHL season. The Lightning is a professional ice hockey team located in Tampa in Florida. They are part of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League. Their home arena is the St. Pete Times Forum which was earlier called the Ice Palace. The team is commonly known as the Bolts or the Nings. They have won the Stanley Cup once, in 2003-04 season.

The Team

The team was established in 1992. In the late 1980's, when the NHL decided to expand, the Lightning was awarded the expansion franchise. The team was headed by the Esposito Brothers and backed by a consortium of Japanese businesses. Kokusai Green, the owner of a Japanese golf course, led the Japanese backers.

They made a dramatic entrance to the NHL by defeating the visiting team Chicago Blackhawks. Though they finished in the last position in the league, their performance was the best as an NHL expansion team. The Bolts qualified for the first time for the Stanley Cup playoffs in their fourth season (1995-96). ...
... Though they lost in the first round itself, the match is amongst the most memorable seasons for their fans. In fact 28,183 fans bought the Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Tickets and were present for the playoffs on April 23rd, setting an NHL record that was broken only in 2003.

The next few years saw dismal performances from the Lightnings. They set the record for being the first NHL team to have four straight 50-loss seasons from 1997-98 to 2000-01. The poor performance of the Bolts had been attributed to the management of Kokusai Green. The team was running losses from their first playoff season itself. Ownership issues also troubled the management of the team.

William Davidson, the owner of the Detroit Pistons, purchased the Bolts in 1999 after the ownership had changed hands once. Davidson then started restructuring the team. His efforts started paying off after he made John Tortella the coach in 2000-01 season. Thereafter the performance of the team started improving. The team had two dream seasons in 2002-03 and in 2003-04 when they won the Stanley Cup. This resulted in an upsurge in the demand for the Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Tickets.

The 2007-08 season saw Vaclav Prospal and the Big Three (Lecavalier, St. Louis, and Richards) performing well but they did not get adequate support from their team members. The 2008-09 season for the Bolts will begin overseas in Prague on October 4-5 against the New York Rangers. The fans are expecting lightning fast action from their revamped team.

The Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Tickets are available on the website of authorized ticket brokers. You can book the tickets from the convenience of your home. All you have to do is to check the inventory of tickets available, select the seating area and then buy the tickets using your credit card. You need not worry about identity theft as the websites of authorized ticket brokers is encrypted. The guaranteed Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Tickets will be delivered to your doorstep through Federal Express within 24 hours.
Al enjoys covering all major sports teams and venues and information for Getting Any Tampa Bay Lightning HockeyTickets to any game of the year. His content provides information for getting Tampa bay Lightning hockey tickets online with ease.