In 2014, I saw a blog post (I don't remember who wrote it) by someone who called San Diego "the Tampa of California." I think he owes San Diego an apology.
Before You Go. While the game will be indoors, you'll still have to get around, so you should know about the weather.
For this weekend, the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) and the Tampa Tribune are both predicting rain, including thunderstorms, for Saturday. Temperatures should be in the low 80s in the afternoon, and the mid-60s at night. Florida must be where the cliche, "It's not the heat that's so bad, it's the humidity" began. So even if you manage to avoid the rain, be prepared to sweat when you're outside the arena.
The Tampa Bay region is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you don't have to change your watch, or the clock on your smartphone. And while Florida was a Confederate State, you don't need to bring a passport or change your money.
Tickets. The Lightning are averaging 19,092 fans per game this season, a sellout. This means that, proportionally, they're doing better at the box office than any other Florida team, including the Miami Heat and the Orlando Magic. It also means that, if only 1 team is likely to still be in Tampa Bay in 10 years, surprise, it's the hockey team.
Lightning tickets are among the cheapest in the NHL. In the Lower Level (100 sections), seats between the goals will run you $98, behind the goals $73. In the Club Level (200s), $83 and $66. In the Upper Level (300s), $52 and $25.
Getting There. It is 1,136 road miles from Times Square in Manhattan to downtown Tampa, and 1,126 miles from the Prudential Center in Newark to the Amalie Arena (formerly named the Ice Palace, the St. Pete Times Forum and the Tampa Bay Times Forum). Sounds like you’re gonna be flying.
If you don't mind changing planes in Philadelphia, Charlotte, or even overshooting Tampa and changing in Miami, you can get a round-trip ticket for under $600. Tampa International Airport was originally named Drew Field, after John H. Drew, a land developer who gave it to the Army.
If you want to take a side-trip to Disney World, you could fly to Orlando (which is 92 miles from Tampa) and rent a car, but I suspect that hotels will be cheaper in the Tampa Bay area, and get more expensive the closer you get to Disney.
Amtrak is longer, but a bit cheaper: $366 round-trip from Newark Penn Station. Amtrak’s Silver Meteor train leaves Penn Station at 3:35 every afternoon, and arrives in Tampa at 12:49 the following afternoon. That’s right, 21½ hours. It leaves Tampa at 5:27 PM the next day, arriving in Newark at 6:54 the following night).
You can get a Greyhound bus out of New York's Port Authority at 11:00 Tuesday morning and be in St. Petersburg by 3:20 Wednesday afternoon. That's a little over 28 hours. Round-trip fare can be as high as $284, but advanced purchase can bring it down to as little as $192. The catch is that you'd have to change buses twice, in Richmond and Orlando. And the layover in Richmond is 3 hours and 15 minutes. And I don't like the Richmond Greyhound station, and I doubt that you will, either. There's also hourlong layovers in Fayetteville, North Carolina and Jacksonville. The Tampa Greyhound station is at 610 E. Polk Street, 4 blocks from the Amtrak station.
If you do prefer to drive, see if you can get someone to split the duties with you. Essentially, you’ll be taking Interstate 95 almost all the way down, turning onto Interstate 10 West at Jacksonville and then, after a few minutes, onto Interstate 75 South. Just outside of Tampa, you’ll switch to Interstate 4, and take that to the end, before its merge with Interstate 275, onto Nebraska Avenue South, riding that into downtown Tampa.
It should take about 2 hours to get through New Jersey, 20 minutes in Delaware, an hour and a half in Maryland, 3 hours in Virginia, 3 hours in North Carolina, 3 hours in South Carolina, 2 hours in Georgia, and a little over 5 hours between crossing into Florida and reaching downtown Tampa.
Given proper 45-minute rest stops – I recommend doing one in Delaware, and then, once you’re through the Washington, D.C. area, doing one when you enter each new State, and then another around Orlando, for a total of 7 – and taking into account city traffic at each end, your entire trip should take about 26 hours. Maybe you can do it in 24 if you speed and limit your rest stops to half an hour each, especially if one of you drives while the other sleeps, but I wouldn’t recommend this.
Once In the City. "Tampa" is believed to be a Native American name meaning "sticks of fire," while St. Petersburg, like the city of the same name in Russia that was known as Leningrad in the Soviet era, is named after the first Pope, the Apostle Peter. Tampa, founded in 1849, is home to 350,000 people; St. Petersburg, founded in 1888, is home to 250,000; and the metro area as a whole, 2.8 million. So, while neither city is big, it's a decent-sized market (and thus should be drawing more people for baseball and football games).
In Tampa, Whiting Street divides the city's streets into North and South, and the Hillsborough River into East and West. In St. Petersburg, Central Avenue divides the city into North and South, and while there appears to be no East-West divider, 1st Street seems to set off a section with Northeast addresses.
HART, Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, runs buses, $2.00 Local and $3.00 Express. PSTA runs $2.00 buses around St. Petersburg. There is no subway or commuter rail. So, if you want to go into St. Pete, taking the 100X bus from downtown Tampa ($3.00) and transferring to a bus in St. Pete ($2.00) will be $5.00 each way.
The sales tax in Florida is 6 percent.
Going In. The arena is downtown, has an official address of 401 Channelside Drive, and is also bounded by Morgan Street and Old Water Street. Depending on which lot you enter, parking will be either $15 or $20. Since the arena is on the waterfront, bounded by the Ybor Channel on the south, you'll probably be entering on the north side. There is an elevated walkway connecting the arena area with the adjacent Embassy Suites hotel complex.
Food. The Tampa Bay region is known for its Spanish and Hispanic heritage. Cuban sandwiches, featuring freshly sliced ham, pork, and Genoa salami on toasted Cuban bread with Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard, are sold throughout the stadium.
Local chain PDQ, a fast, casual dining restaurant that specializes in fresh hand-battered chicken tenders, sells chicken tenders, sandwiches, fresh salads, fries and other favorites off their restaurant menu, outside Section 102. Mr. Empanada, Tacos Trueno, Anthony’s Italian Sandwich, Deli and Stir Fry and a carving station will be new offerings around the arena. Additionally, a new portable concession stand on the 100 Level will feature fresh, hand-rolled sushi for fans attending Lightning games and Amalie Arena events. A gourmet grilled cheese portable concession stand will also be available on the 100 Level concourse.
Holy Hog has a new location on the 100 level. The local BBQ restaurant opened their first location on the Bud Light Party Deck at the beginning of the 2014-15. Items available at Holy Hog include award winning barbeque, mac n’ cheese, beef brisket sandwiches and other favorites from their restaurant menu.
The Lightning will be offering fans the option to purchase value meal items at select locations around Amalie Arena. Value items at Lightning home games will include $4 Kayem hot dog, $4 garden salad, $4 chicken nuggets, $5 Lynchburg nuggets and fries and $8.75 super slice of pizza and a 12 oz. soda.
The premium menus at Amalie Arena have also been updated for the upcoming season. Firestick Grill will now offer fresh rolled sushi, grilled veal rack chop, hydroponic green salads and fresh stone crab claws. Fans enjoying events and Lightning games from the suite level will now have the option to order World of Beer pretzels with beer cheese dipping sauces and the famous Columbia Restaurants 1905 salad.
Team History Displays. The Lightning hang their 2004 Stanley Cup banner, 2004 and 2015 Eastern Conference title banners, and 2003 and 2004 Southeast Division banners from the rafters. True, the Devils also have banners for Division and Conference title seasons in which we also won the Cup, but with as many banners as we have, and with the 3 Cup banners at the opposite end of the arena, it doesn't look like we have a brief history of success all clumped together. Even the Islanders and Flyers, who had dynasties and haven't won the Cup since, have enough banners to make it look worth their while. The Bolts, as yet, don't.
Dave Andreychuk played the last 3 seasons of a 640-goal career for the Lightning, and is eligible for the Hall, but isn't yet in. Vincent Lecavalier is still active (with the Los Angeles Kings), and Martin St. Louis is only recently retired, so neither is eligible yet. Lecavalier's Number 4 and St. Louis' 26 are not currently being worn, suggesting a future retirement for each of those numbers; however, Matt Carle is wearing Andreychuk's 25.
The Lightning do not yet have a team Hall of Fame. Perhaps next season, they will name a 25th Anniversary All-Time Team.
Stuff. The Tampa Bay Sports store is located to the right of the main staircase, inside the McDonald's Ticket Office on the west side of the arena.
Whether the Store sells team books and DVDs, I don't know. Most likely, the only DVD they would sell would be the official 2004 Stanley Cup highlight video. As for books about the team, you may be out of luck, at least until 2017 when they'll celebrate their 25th Anniversary. Steve Yerrid published Tampa Bay Lightning Winning Ways: The Making of a Championship Heart, but that was back in 2005, during the yearlong lockout, and is now well out of date, with no mention of current star Steven Stamkos.
During the Game. A November 19, 2014 article on The Hockey News' website ranked the NHL teams' fan bases, and listed the Lightning's fans at 24th -- not good, but 1 above their arch-rivals, the Panthers. The article says, "A good team at a bargain price? Why don't more people support the Lightning?" In fact, they're averaging a sellout. They're a National Hockey League team averaging more fans per game than their metropolitan area's Major League Baseball team. There is no other metro area where the NHL team outdraws the MLB team. Whatever the Lightning's issues are, attendance is not one of them.
Although the locals -- the ones who are not transplanted New Yorkers or New Jerseyans, anyway -- really, really hate the Yankees and Yankee Fans for repeatedly "taking over their ballpark" (as if it were much of a task, or much of a prize), their hockey fans don't have the same kind of rivalry with any of the New York Tri-State Area hockey teams -- not even the Rangers, whom they beat in last year's Eastern Conference Finals. They will not fight you. Aside from the occasional brawl between football players in the "hate triangle" between the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of Miami, there is rarely violence at sporting events in Florida.
Sonya Bryson, a retired Air Force sergeant, is the Lightning's regular National Anthem singer. Their goal song is "Fluxland," by the group of the same name. The big chant is, "Let's go, Bolts!"
The team's mascot is ThunderBug -- actually, a lightning bug. (Get it?) He wears a Lightning jersey with Number 00 on it. The team also has the Lightning Girls dancers.
After the Game. Despite some crime issues -- Tampa natives Dwight Gooden and his nephew Gary Sheffield both dealt with gang violence growing up in the 1970s and '80s -- Downtown Tampa is not an especially high-crime area. And, as I said, Bolts fans do not get violent. You might get a little bit of verbal if you're wearing opposing team gear, but it won't get any worse than that.
If you're looking for a place to relax with a postgame snack and drink, a mall named Channelside Bay Plaza is across Beneficial Driver from the arena. It has a Hooters, a Japanese restaurant named Oishi, a "fusion" restaurant called Flambe', and a ColdStone Creamery.
Malio's, in downtown Tampa at 400 N. Ashley Drive at Kennedy Blvd., is a locally famous restaurant, known around there as George Steinbrenner's favorite. He had a private room there, as does the still-living Tampa native and Yankee Legend Lou Piniella.
Sidelights. The Yankees' spring training home, George M. Steinbrenner Field (formerly Legends Field), is at Dale Mabry Highway and Tampa Bay Blvd., across from the home of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Raymond James Stadium. (Raymond James is a financial holding company, not a person native to Tampa who deserved the naming rights.)
The University of South Florida (USF) also plays football at Raymond James, and the U.S. national soccer team has played 4 games there, and has never lost, winning 3 and drawing 1. They also played 3 games at Tampa Stadium.
North of Raymond James was Al Lopez Field. (Lopez, a Hall of Fame catcher and manager, was a person native to Tampa who deserved the naming rights.) North of that was the Buccaneers' first home, Tampa Stadium, known as The Big Sombrero because of its weird shape. It was built in 1967 with 46,000 seats, and expanded to 74,000 when the Bucs were expanded into existence in 1976. The Giants beat the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV there, and it also hosted Super Bowl XVIII, with the Los Angeles Raiders beating the Washington Redskins. It was demolished in 1999. Raymond James Stadium hosted Super Bowl XXXV, with the Giants losing to the Baltimore Ravens, and Super Bowl XLIII, with the Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Arizona Cardinals. It is 1 of 4 stadiums in the running to host Super Bowl LIII in February 2019, and Super Bowl LIV in 2020, so it has a 50-50 chance of hosting one of them.
The entire group of current and former stadium sites is north of downtown Tampa, near the airport. Take the Number 30 bus from downtown to the Number 36 bus to the complex.
One of the legendary homes of spring training baseball, Al Lang Field (now Progress Energy Park), named for the Mayor who promoted St. Pete as a spring training site, is at 1st Street SE & 2nd Avenue S., 2 miles east of the Trop, in downtown St. Pete on the shore of Tampa Bay.
The spring home of the Yankees from 1947 to 1961, the Mets from 1962 to 1987, and the St. Louis Cardinals from 1947 to 1997, it is no longer used as a major league spring training or Florida State League regular season facility. In fact, the new Rays ballpark was supposed to be built on the site, but they haven't been able to get the funding, so Al Lang Field remains standing. It is the home of the new version the Tampa Bay Rowdies, in the new version of the North American Soccer League, the second division of North American soccer. Bus 100X to Bus 4.
Tampa-based teams have won Florida State League Pennants in 1920, '25 (Tampa Smokers), '57, '61 (Tampa Tarpons), '94, 2001, '04, '09 and '10 (Tampa Yankees). St. Petersburg teams have done it in 1975, '86 (St. Petersburg Cardinals) and '97 (St. Petersburg Devil Rays, who won a Pennant before their parent club had even played a game). The Clearwater Phillies won a Pennant in the same year as their parent club in Philadelphia, 1993, and won another under their current name, the Clearwater Threshers, in 2007, presaging their parent club's success.
To get to Tropicana Field, home of the Rays, you'll have to go onto Interstate 275, and cross the Howard Frankland Bridge – a bridge so traffic-ridden it's known locally as “Frankenstein” and “the Car-Strangled Spanner” – over Tampa Bay itself and into St. Pete.
Opened in 1990 as the Florida Suncoast Dome, and nicknamed the White Elephant because of its exterior color and lack of a tenant for the sport for which it was intended, the name was changed in 1993 when the NHL's Lightning came in, making the stadium the ThunderDome. But they were only there for 3 seasons, until the building now known as the Tampa Bay Times Forum opened.
In their home opener, October 10, 1993, the Bolts set what was then an NHL record of 27,227 fans in the quirky seating configuration the place had at the time. So an expansion hockey team -- in Florida, mind you -- in the era before you could buy game tickets online, managed to outdraw a winning, Internet-era baseball team.
The official current seating capacity is 31,042, but that's with several sections of seats tarped over. The actual number of seats is 42,735, but that doesn't give the Trop an "intimate setting." Like the hardly-mourned Kingdome in Seattle, the high, gray roof gives the stadium the look of a bad mall. Those "catwalks" around the rim don't help. And that awful field -- one of the few ever, and the only one now, to have a dirt infield with the rest of the field being artificial turf, instead of just dirt cutouts around the bases -- may make you nostalgic for Giants Stadium's awful experiments with real grass. But the seating design itself may look familiar to you, in shape if not in color: It was copied from Kauffman Stadium (formerly Royals Stadium) in Kansas City. Don't look for fountains in the outfield, though: That would be too classy for this joint.
The Lightning played their 1st season, 1992-93, at Expo Hall, part of the Florida State Fairgrounds. It seats only 10,425 people, so it was never going to be more than a temporary home, but they outgrew it immediately, because, unlike the new Ottawa Senators, who came into the NHL at the same time, they weren't horrible; indeed, they were rather respectable from the off. 4800 U.S. Route 301, about 8 miles northeast of downtown. It would take 3 buses to get there.
The Tampa Bay History Center is across from the arena at 801 Old Water Street. The Florida Aquarium is at 701 Channelside Drive, east of the mall. And Busch Gardens, with its African theme (for political correctness reasons, they can't call it "The Dark Continent" anymore), is at 10165 N. Malcolm McKinley Drive, 10 miles northeast of downtown. Take the Number 8 bus to 7th Avenue & 15th Street, then walk up 15th Street to 11th Avenue and catch the Number 18 bus, and take that to Busch Blvd.
This should provide you with some non-sports things to do in the Tampa Bay region. And, if you want to go there, Walt Disney World is 70 miles up Interstate 4, an hour and 15 minutes by car from downtown Tampa.
The Tampa Bay region doesn't have a lot of tall buildings. The tallest, at 579 feet, is 100 North Tampa, named for its address at Whiting Street downtown, formerly named the Regions Building.
Oh, and, get this: As New York is known as the Big Apple, Tampa likes to call itself the Big Guava. In the words of the immortal Jack Paar, I kid you not.
As far as I know, the only major-network TV show set in the Tampa Bay region has been Second Noah, ABC's 1996-97 series starring Daniel Hugh Kelly as a veterinarian at Busch Gardens. Quite a few films have been set there, though, including Cocoon, Edward Scissorhands and A Time to Kill.
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So, if you can afford it, go on down and join your fellow Devils fans in a little Florida hockey. You'd probably have more fun there than in the Panthers' out-of-the-way arena. Winning, well, that's another matter.
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