Catching Up With Phil Esposito

With the Tampa Bay Rays in the playoffs for the first time ever, the Tampa Bay area has finally been able to enjoy meaningful baseball games at The Trop in October. It’s hard to believe, but 15 years ago this month The Trop was the newly rechristened ThunderDome, ready to serve as the home of the Tampa Bay Lightning. After playing their first season at Expo Hall in Tampa, the Lightning embarked across the Bay to make a new home in a stadium built for baseball. I recently sat down with Lightning founder Phil Esposito to discuss how hockey first came to be played at the Dome.

Q. How did the first pre-Lightning exhibition game come about?

A. Well, before we could get a team, my partners (Henry Paul, Mel Lowell) and I decided we would have to put on an exhibition game for the NHL. I'll never forget going over to (what was called at the time) the Florida Suncoast Dome for the first time. I remember looking around and thinking, "How in the hell are we going to get ice in here, and where are we going to put the rink?" So the guy who was running the place at the time – I can’t remember his name, but he was a real nice guy -- asked us if a tennis configuration would work. Absolutely it would, I told him. I remember we put the yellow police tape all the way around the floor, and then we marked it off and went to the top corners of the dome to make sure people could see the rink from all angles.

Q. You chose two high-profile teams -- the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins -- to play in the exhibition game on Sept. 19, 1990. How did you pull that off?

A. I called Los Angeles, which was run by their former goaltender, Rogie Vachon. I asked if they'd come play an exhibition game in Florida. They wanted to know where, so I said in a baseball facility in St.
Petersburg. Rogie said fine, but with if we wanted Wayne Gretzky to come it would cost us $150,000. I said, "Come on Rogie, $150,000 is too much. I can't afford to give you that." He told me that's what we get when Wayne plays, but that they could come without him.

Well, the point was to have Wayne because we knew the place would be packed for people coming to see him. Eventually he said that they'd do it for $100,000. Then I decided that I wanted to get Mario Lemiuex with Pittsburgh, so I called their general manager, Craig Patrick. I intended to pay them the same amount. I asked Craig if they'd come, but that Mario's gotta play. We wanted to charge the first row $99 and the second row $66 to honor Wayne and Mario. Craig asked me why I was doing that. He said it would look like Wayne was worth more money and Mario wouldn't like it. I remember saying to him, "Yeah, so what's your point?" Little did I know, he had no intention of bringing Mario.

So I told my partners that if Mario doesn't come, I'm not giving Pittsburgh $100,000. Mario ended up not coming, so after the game we only gave them a check for $70,000. Craig asked me what happened to the other $30,000, and I said to him, “That was for Mario to come.” He said that's not right, but I told him I don't care. What was he going to do to me? But, that's why when we got the Lightning, we could never get the Penguins to play us in an exhibition game. They wouldn't do it.

The bottom line is it cost me -- and I put all the money up, every penny I had in my life -- $500,000. People wondered why I wanted to do this, but we had to show the NHL that we could draw a crowd. And it turned out to be a huge success. We drew over 25,000 that night. The game was fabulous. Afterwards, Wayne showered up and went over to our corporate tents that we had set up in the outfield. He signed autographs, talked to people, and told me, "Phil, anytime you need help here, anything you need, you call me. I'll be glad to do what ever I can to help you get a franchise." I'll never forget that. He was so good to us it was ridiculous.

Q. The team announced it would be moving to St. Petersburg in July of 1993, which only allowed for a few months to get the stadium hockey ready. What were some of the challenges?

A. It happened real fast. We had to do something about the upper deck to get people up there. Then we wanted to put some corporate tents in centerfield, a place where kids could kick field goals, play floor hockey, maybe do some miniature golf, make it fun. You know a lot of kids came to the games, but never even watched the game. That was great for the parents because all they'd pay is $5 to get them in the door. It worked out fine.

Q. Was it hard leaving the Fairgrounds behind?

A. I liked the Fairgrounds, and the fans loved it. I thought it was so much fun. The atmosphere was unbelievable. There were only 10,000 seats, so everyone was on top of the action. The reality was we couldn't afford to play there. Who knows what would have happened if we had stayed? If we didn't go to the Dome, we may have never gotten a new building in Tampa. The move to St. Pete made the city of Tampa stand up and say, "We want you to play here in Tampa." We were negotiating with St. Pete to put a new building south of the Dome, at the other end of the main parking lot. I really thought we should have built in the Gateway area, so it wouldn't be such a long commute for everybody.

I’ll tell you though, the atmosphere at the ThunderDome was unbelievable. I don't know if it's the acoustics because of the roof, but in 1996 when we won that playoff game in overtime, I've never heard anything so loud in my life. Not even when we won the Stanley Cup. If they'd never gotten a baseball team or we never got a new building, it wouldn't have bothered me one iota to have stayed in that building. We'd have reconfigured it as a circle and put in new seats ourselves. I was pretty content there, but I knew we had to get a new building because the league insisted on it. That was the only way we the Lightning, and the sport of hockey, could survive in this area.

Q. Do you have fond memories at the Dome?

A. The crowds were terrific. Opening night against the Florida Panthers we set the indoor attendance record for the NHL with over 27,000 fans. We finally made some money that season. I have to give David LeFevre (former Lightning governor) this. He wanted to charge a $99 season ticket for upper deck seats. I loved the idea. We found out later those people were spending $24-30 per game in concessions. And to this day, people tell me they had more fun at the Dome than they knew what to do with. I think being over there those few years really helped grow hockey in this area.

Lightning Strikes in Tampa Bay, Fall 1992

In the days before the St. Pete Times Forum, the team played in a glorified barn called Expo Hall. Before Brad Richards, there was the original No. 19, Brian Bradley. Before the team ever won a Stanley Cup, it played a woman, Manon Rheaume, in goal during an exhibition game.

As Archie Bunker would say, "Those were the days."

Fifteen years ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning were brand new and enjoying their status as a sports novelty in the Bay area. The National Hockey League awarded an expansion franchise to the Tampa Bay Hockey Group -- led by Hall of Famer Phil Esposito -- on Dec. 6, 1990. Less than two years later, Esposito built a franchise from the ground up that would exceed everyone's expectations during its inaugural season.

When the Lightning arrived on the scene in the fall of 1992, the Bay area was a vastly different place than today. The Buccaneers still were an orange-clad punch line, baseball fans hoped Vince Naimoli would relocate the Giants from San Francisco and anyone who predicted the University of South Florida’s football team could be ranked second in the nation would have been a candidate for a relaxing stay in Chatahoochee.

The Lightning arrived at the perfect time -- think of them as a buffet table on ice for a community starved for an exciting and competitive sports franchise.

From the start, fans of the Lightning knew to expect the unexpected, starting with the Rheaume experiment during training camp. Esposito, always colorful, defended her presence and said he would put skates on a horse if he knew it could stop a puck.

Rheaume won over the fans and media with her captivating personality, then acquitted herself nicely with a seven-save performance against the St. Louis Blues in an exhibition game, becoming the first woman to play in an NHL game.

The Lightning kept the surprises coming on opening night, Oct. 7, 1992, against the defending Campbell Conference champion Chicago Blackhawks. Despite the presence of actor Alan Thicke, the Lightning would experience few, if any, growing pains on that night.

Behind four goals by forward Chris Kontos, Tampa Bay shocked the hockey world and dazzled the home crowd by soundly defeating Chicago, 7-3. It was one of the most impressive debuts by any expansion team in any sport, and the win proved to be anything but a fluke during the first two months of the season.

The Lightning started 9-8-2, and briefly enjoyed a stay in first place. From Nov. 3-16, Tampa Bay went on a season-high six-game unbeaten streak, wining five and tying once.

The streak featured one of the most exciting games of the season, a 6-5 overtime victory over the Islanders in New York. Lightning defenseman Doug Crossman registered three goals, including the game-winner, and added three assists. Crossman’s six points that night remain the single-game mark for a Tampa Bay defenseman.

From the first game, the Lightning defied the cliches that accompany expansion franchises. Unlike many fledgling teams that struggle to score, the Lightning averaged nearly four goals per game through the first 19 games. Plus, Tampa Bay did not experience its first shutout until the 35th game of the season, a 2-0 setback to the New Jersey Devils on Dec. 18.

The Lightning played exciting hockey, even in defeat. Of Tampa Bay’s first eight losses, six were by just one goal. Instead of being a punching bag for the NHL, the Lightning, with their mixture of veterans and young talent, earned a reputation as one of the hardest-working teams in the league.

On Nov. 9, the Lightning earned a standing ovation after a 5-1 drubbing of the Rangers. Amazingly, the game was played in Madison Square Garden and the ovation was courtesy of a New York crowd.

During that inaugural season, fans immediately embraced the team's first superstar, center Brian Bradley. A castoff from the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, Bradley found his calling in Tampa Bay by tallying 42 goals and 44 assists in 80 games, and led the team in almost every major offensive category. Additionally, Bradley earned a selection to the Campbell Conference squad for the All-Star game, as well as team MVP honors at the end of the season.

Eventually, the rest of the league caught up to the Lightning and the inevitable slumps and losing streaks followed. Still, the Lightning provided Tampa fans with a successful and memorable inaugural season.

The team finished with 23 wins and 53 total points, 14 more than the San Jose Sharks recorded in their expansion season of 1991.

Esposito called the Lightning's 53 points "incredible," and who could argue with his choice of words. The success of the 1992-93 Lightning helped build the strong bond that exists between the team and its fans.

It began with that first game against Chicago in 1992 and culminated with the Lightning’s greatest triumph, the 2004 Stanley Cup victory over the Calgary Flames.