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Steven Stamkos becomes Tampa Bay Lightning's scoring leader with 954th point TAMPA, Fla. -- Steven Stamkos scored his 34th goal of the season and became Tampa Bay's all-time scoring leader as the Lightning beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 8-1 on Thursday night. Stamkos, the first overall pick in the 2008 draft, fired a one-timer from the left circle off a feed from Nikita Kucherov for the record-breaking 954th point of his career. He moved past Martin St. Louis, who had 365 goals and 588 assists with the Lightning.   A congratulatory video was shown on the ..read more

Cooper , on the rare occasion that his team is down brings back memories of a regular season ending game back in early 70s when Blackhawks pumped in 7 empty netters vs Canadians.  It was a rare year that Montreal did not make the playoffs.  Eliminated on final day.  They needed to score so many goals to win a tie breaker so the coach turned it into a circus with about 10 minutes left trailing 3-2.  The Hawks put 7 in , final was 10-2.  Does anyone remember this?  I believe Tony Esposito was in goal, game was in Chicago  ..read more

Lightning's Steven Stamkos joins career 1,000-point club   PHILADELPHIA -- Steven Stamkos never was more elated to get a secondary assist.   Stamkos had an assist for his 1,000th career point, Nick Paul scored twice and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-1 on Thursday night.   The No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 draft, Stamkos assisted on Paul's second goal 7:55 into the second period that made it 2-0. Stamkos started the play with a pass behind the net to Ian Cole, who sent the puck in front to Paul. "It's the mos ..read more

With their failed bid for a three peat in the rearview mirror, it is now time for the former Stanley Cup champions and current Prince of Wales champions to face the harsh realities of the salary cap....and facing the music of being the victims of their own success. While the main core of Stamkos, Hedman, Point, Kucherov, Vasilevskiy remain, the other players may not be so safe to stay on. Sergachev, Cirelli, Hagel, possibly Cernak as well, are safe bets they will stay on as secondary players with a probability they will be given more responsibilities and a chance to be main core players th ..read more

And then there were two.....   PRESEASON OUTLOOK Back to back championships, as usual in the cap era they were forced to move some valuable pieces out and replace them with cheaper younger players, losing grit guys like Goodrow, Gourde, Johnson and Coleman might set a lesser team back for a year or two but these are the Bolts. The core is still intact and they were hoping for a three peat.   FINAL RCORD 51-23-8 110 points 3rd in the Atlantic. They beat the Leafs in 7 in the opening round, swept the Cats out of Florida, stormed back after being down 2 games to none against the Rangers ..read more