Barry Melrose has graced us all with hockey knowledge since he joined ESPN in 1996. It appears as though he will be spreading that wealth with the Tampa Bay Lightning next season. Tampa Bay was an NHL worst 31-42-9 in 2007-08. Their 71 points tied them for the lowest in the league with Melrose’s last team, the Los Angeles Kings.

From 1992 to 1995 Melrose was the coach of the Kings. He led them to the Stanley Cup finals in his first season, where they would eventually lose to the Montréal Canadiens in five games. The next two seasons were not nearly as successful, going a combined 40-66-19.

Only days ago Melrose addressed the prospect of coaching the Lightning by only saying how much he loved his job at ESPN. That, however, was before Tampa Bay fired coach John Tortorella today, who was four years removed from a Stanley Cup victory. Reports have that coaching vacancy filled already by the now former hockey analyst.

Ice Shavings

• Game 4 of the NHL Stanley Cup finals ended eventually early Tuesday morning when the Penguins’ Petr Sykora scored on a four-minute power play in the third overtime to end the fifth longest game in Cup finals history. Impressively, Sykora tapped on the glass mid-way through the game to tell “Inside the Glass” hockey “expert” Pierre McGuire that he would score in overtime. In his defense he didn’t know that McGuire’s microphone was actually attached to anything because most of the players (like most of the viewers) usually try to ignore his existence. The Detroit Red Wings had numerous opportunities to put the game away, but missed the net a lot in overtime and when they did get it on net, Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury was there to close the door. Sykora may have ended the game, but Fleury was by far the player of the game, and arguably (although that argument is waning) has been the Penguins best player in the playoffs.
• The NHL on NBC aired a pretty laughable segment of “Sounds of the Game” where they had a microphone on Red Wings forward Tomas Holmstrom. They decided to play all the parts of the game where Holmstrom said absolutely nothing at all. Invigorating. It probably went more like this hilarious take from Knob Hockey, a set of videos on YouTube. While the videos are hysterical, some are NSFW.