Your Tampa Bay Lightning -- Starring Olaf Kolzig as Bill Ranford... and Mike Smith as Olaf Kolzig!

Poor Smitty. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

After his trade from Dallas to Tampa (oddly enough, the location of the St. Petersburg Times Forum), Mike Smith first had to play for noted goalie-crusher John Tortorella, and it appeared he would get a reprieve when the team's new ownership cashiered ol' Torts. But not so fast...

As Capitals fans may recall, new Lightning coach Barry Melrose -- then an ESPN analyst -- pushed very stridently for the Capitals to start the overripe Bill Ranford in net for the 1997-98 Stanley Cup playoffs. And, as even non-Capitals fans may recall, the mostly untested Kolzig led the team all the way to the Finals. Ranford would soon retire.

The new Tampa Bay braintrust -- New, from the makers of "Saw 3"! -- has brought in Kolzig on a one-year, $1.5M deal. Kolzig -- already shown to be a chronic overestimator of his viability as a player, and no sort of mentor to a younger goaltender -- will probably be billed as having been signed to "compete" with Smith for the starting job, but color me skeptical. Given Melrose's on-record opinions over the years, I wonder how long a proverbial rope Kolzig will be given as a starter. (If nothing else, hockey fans have long and obsessively detailed memories.)

And what a paltry contract for a guy who still considers himself a top-tier starter, albeit wrongly. Given his tantrum-stained departure from Washington, it seems reasonable that the biggest selling point of this deal is that he'll get to play against his former team eight times this season.

And finally, on a more "meta" level, consider this: for the first time ever, a professional sports franchise is making splashy moves in part to displace the Tampa Bay Rays from the front of the sports page. We are through the looking glass, people.

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