The FourCheck: Check the spelling, media day and a motivated Tampa Bay

Alright, I hold no blame if you just read this headline and now you’re trying to figure out how I cover hockey if I don't know how to spell the oft-used hockey term forecheck.

So, then what is the FourCheck?

I’ve realized through one season as your team beat writer covering the Tampa Bay Lightning that sometimes stories go untold simply because the timing isn’t right or other items pop up that require more attention.

The FourCheck will be a longform piece, or perhaps blog, that I share occasionally throughout the season to tell some of those stories that go untold. Sometimes it might be sharing personal or funny stories from locker room chats, and other topics might be crazy, weird statistics that I uncover while compiling the game notes.

This will adapt and grow, but my goal is to bring you four items that provide a closer look at the Tampa Bay Lightning, connect you with your favorite personalities on the team and bring a more personal, in-depth and first-person writing perspective to some of the greatest fans in the world.

In some ways this idea was inspired by the 32 Thoughts blog written by Elliotte Friedman, one of the staple hockey writers whose pieces I grew up reading and studying in order to improve my jibberish scribbles with the hope of one day reaching the NHL.

Elliotte helped my fandom grow from the time I was just a youth hockey player who dreamed of reaching the NHL either on skates or through a notebook and pen, and I hope I can provide even a sliver of that same knowledge and connection to you here in Tampa.

Let’s begin with notes from 2025 Media Day:

1. Setting The Benchmark

The downtown arena is in store for a shiny, new nameplate, and the ice surface has been installed at the freshly restyled Benchmark International Arena.

And best of all, NHL hockey is right around the corner.

Players greeted us for media day on Wednesday, chatting ahead of the 2025-26 campaign on the first day of NHL training camp.

Much like their fans, the Bolts are itching to get back to gameday and hopefully the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Fans and everyone else might take some time to adjust to the new arena name. The players’ hope, though, is to continue bringing one of the league’s most potent teams to a freshly named playing surface every night as they chase another Stanley Cup.

They know that includes going through the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers and the rest of a tough Atlantic Division, and they look forward to the challenge.

“There's a lot of good hockey teams, especially in our division. They continue to get better every single year. We come in and we’ve got to do our job. I think our first goal is to make the playoffs, and that's the standard right from the beginning,” forward Brandon Hagel said.

The Tampa Bay Lightning are a team that needs to be in the playoffs, and there's no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Hagel continued. “And we know teams are going to continue to get better, but we just go out there, focus on ourselves, try to get better as a team day by day, and hopefully when we're looking at the standings, we're right there.”

Defenseman Ryan McDonagh is entering the final season of his current contract and feels strong ahead of his 16th NHL campaign. The Lightning fan favorite led the NHL in plus-minus in 2024-25 with a plus-43 rating and added three assists in five playoff games for Tampa Bay.

"To start the season like this with a group similar to last year, that belief from management not to want to shake things up and make a lot of changes, now it's up to us as players and the team and the staff to get the job done and start off on the right foot here and see where the team can go,” McDonagh said.

Lightning general manager and vice president of hockey operations Julien BriseBois said on Wednesday his team aims to extend McDonagh beyond this season, adding that all pending free agent conversations will likely wait until after the 2025-26 season.

"When we traded for Ryan McDonagh, I told him the plan was to not only have him finish his contract here, but sign another contract after that. My expectation is that's what's going to happen, just like when we traded for Yanni Gourde...That's what I'm hoping and expecting will happen after the season with Ryan McDonagh,” BriseBois said. “He led the league in plus-minus last year. He went to the USA camp, has a shot at making the Olympic team. He's still an elite, elite defender in this league and a phenomenal leader."

2. Lightning leaders continue belief

Much of Tampa Bay’s roster remains in place from the 2024-25 team, one which finished eighth in the NHL regular season standings while ranking top five in both goals for (316, first) and goals against (216, fourth) across the NHL.

The Lightning maintain their belief in one another, and that stems from the very tip-top of the organization.

“At the end of last season, goals against, goals for, power play, PK, goal differential, 5-on-5 play, we checked a lot of boxes,” BriseBois said Wednesday. “We still went out and tried to do even better. Tried to improve the roster at the deadline, tried to improve the roster this offseason. So you're always looking to improve your roster. I think what’s exciting for us now is some of that growth might be internal. It might be organic. We have some young players that are going to be pushing to play a bigger role, I think, and it'll be exciting to see if they're able to do that and how quickly they'll be able to do that.”

The team’s on-ice product figures to be strong once again, as the Lightning will seek to expand their playoff streak to nine straight seasons—a run that currently ties Colorado for the second-longest active stretch in the NHL (Toronto, nine).

"We look at what we did during the regular season and it shows that we're good enough,” Lightning captain Victor Hedman said of breaking through the first round of the postseason. "For us, it's all about stepping out of our comfort zone and getting back to what we know works. We've just got to do it for 82 games and then hopefully a lot longer into the summer. It's up to us, and it's up to me and everyone to step out of their comfort zone and get ready for another great year."

Multiple players on Wednesday said their hunger to win another Stanley Cup persists, and it showed on Wednesday.

After falling to the eventual Stanley Cup champion in each of the past two seasons, the Lightning cited consistency as the way to make them the lone team standing when Lord Stanley is handed out.

When asked about having the NHL’s fifth-best power play last regular season, leading scorer Nikita Kucherov was quick to point out that the team didn’t see that same special teams success in the postseason—Tampa Bay scored on two of its 18 power play chances (11.1%) in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

He said he took the lack of postseason power play success “personally”.

“That’s something that you hate to see, and you're just hungry to go back on the ice and work on things and know why that didn't work,” he said. “So you go out there and work on the game, and hopefully you find solutions for next year and be better.”

Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy finished second in voting for the 2025 Vezina Trophy, the award given annually to the NHL’s best goalie. Much of his offseason was dedicated to flexibility and body maintenance, as the 31-year-old netminder joked he is getting too old for squats.

Like Kucherov, Vasilevskiy also hopes the Lightning can qualify for the playoffs again this year. But this time, he wants to help bring a more consistent effort as a team.

“Consistency is the main factor here. I thought the regular seasons over the last few years were pretty all right, but the playoffs were just a different story,” Vasilevskiy said. “I mean, obviously it didn't help that we played the Stanley Cup champions two times in a row, but if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.”

The goalie believes in the team, as does McDonagh:

“Usually the most consistent team finds a way to finish it and get the job done and win. So that's what we'll try to do again, is just be a little more consistent, be a little sharper in situations,” McDonagh said. “There's no reason to not have a ton of confidence and a ton of belief in this group. All you can control is having a good camp, having a good start to the season and try to carry that momentum all the way.”

Their captain agreed, too.

“Game one against Ottawa is just as important against game 75. You put yourself up for success by playing well throughout the whole year,” Hedman said. "Divisional games are super important, but those other games too, you can't take for granted…there’s a lot of up and coming teams with a lot of good players….it’s up to everyone in our room to take that next step and keep playing the way we know we can play."

For the few players preparing for their inaugural Lightning seasons, we hope they feel the same.

Plenty of players and professionals who get their first look at Lightning hockey speak about a first-class experience and how much they learn, even if that experience is for a limited time.

Which leads me to….

3. Opportunity knocks

‘Opportunity knocks, open the door’ is the phrase I hear whenever someone tosses around the word ‘opportunity’ in casual conversation.

Where I grew up in Wisconsin, it became a go-to moniker and TV commercial for a local company, and that catchphrase is about all I remember from any of their showings.

And while that memory began as an odd commercial that occasionally made me want to turn off the TV, it might be the perfect phrase for what awaits some younger players aiming for the Lightning roster this spring.

Center Jack Finley has an opportunity to win a spot in the forward group after scoring 14 goals and 28 points in 40 games with the Syracuse Crunch in the American Hockey League (AHL) last season. He got his first NHL taste on Jan. 14 against Boston.

The big-bodied Finley comes in at 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds and has a chance to replace some of the minutes played last season by a combination of Luke Glendening and Cam Atkinson, who both left in free agency this summer.

"Jack Finley's in the mix now,” BriseBois said in July. ”I am fairly confident he'd already be in the NHL if it weren't for the injuries he suffered over the years, and now he's at a point where he's going to be given that opportunity. He's done it really well at the AHL level. He's been that penalty kill, right-shot face-off guy who excels in the dot, and we're going to give him the opportunity to grow into that role at the NHL level.”

Defenseman Max Crozier has also been around the Lightning in recent seasons, being called up as a possible fill-in for Game 5 of the First Round Stanley Cup Playoffs series against Florida after appearing in five regular season games in January 2025.

Crozier has a chance to emerge as an NHL regular this training camp with the departure of Nick Perbix, who played much of last season alongside Emil Lilleberg.

The 25-year-old Crozier was a 2019 fourth-round selection by the Lightning and has 18 games of NHL experience. More should be on the way this season.

We saw Conor Geekie make the Lightning out of training camp a year ago as a 20-year-old, and fans quickly took to the recently acquired forward in his rookie season. He finished with eight goals and 14 points in 52 games for Tampa Bay, also spending some time with Syracuse.

Geekie finished the year with the Lightning for the playoffs, and his experience last year gives coach Jon Cooper options.

Geekie’s ability to move around the lineup could be particularly helpful after we learned on Wednesday that forward Nick Paul required upper-body surgery last Friday and will be unavailable until early November.

“I would say where he fits in the lineup is a (Cooper) decision. The good part for us is Conor can play in various positions and can fill different roles for us already. What am I expecting from him personally? I'm expecting him to take a step,” BriseBois said of Geekie. “I know he's put in the work this summer, spent a lot of time working with our development people, was very diligent about it on the ice, off the ice. He's one of the players I'm excited to see how big of a step he's taken during this offseason.”

Could we see Jakob Pelletier—the former First Round pick in the 2019 NHL Draft signed by Tampa Bay in free agency this summer—crack the opening night roster as a depth forward?

The 24 year old has NHL experience, and Brisebois said earlier this summer that the team thinks there might be untapped potential there. He is on a three-year deal, so there is no rush. Time will tell.

Opportunity knocks. Who will open the door? (Sorry, I had to)

4. A repeat of a repeat and 1K Kucherov

Nikita Kucherov has a chance to make even more history this season.

We’re talking about a guy who won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Lightning and whose resume also boasts a Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s MVP in 2019 as well as consecutive NHL scoring titles.

Watching him pass the puck and how he reads the game reminds me of being a 10-year-old at free skate at the local rink who thought I could challenge the older kids in 3-on-3 and then having to watch the elders bounce the puck off my skates before leaving me in the dust and scoring bar-down. Except Kucherov is doing it against all-world players on an NHL sheet of ice all season long.

At least once a game, Kucherov makes a pass or a play that leaves me in the press box thinking, ‘How the heck did he see that?’

The 31-year-old Russian forward won his second consecutive Art Ross Trophy last season as the NHL’s leading scorer, racking up 121 points in 78 games on his way to winning the Ted Lindsay Award as the NHL’s most outstanding player. He joined Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and future Hockey Hall of Famer Jaromir Jagr as the only players in the last 25 seasons to win back-to-back NHL scoring titles.

McDavid is the only active NHLer to win three consecutive scoring titles (2020-2022), and only six players (Jaromir Jagr, Wayne Gretzky, Guy Lafleur, Phil Esposito, Gordie Howe) have done so in league history.

Can Kucherov become number seven? I wouldn’t count him out.

Individual trophies are not Kucherov’s focus. He has his sights on getting back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs and winning when it matters most.

Counting, though, is exactly what all of us will be doing every time Kucherov touches the puck to open the 2025-26 season. He is six points from recording his 1,000th career point, all of which have come with the Lightning.

“I think it's just all around the ice, controlling the puck and making sure I find the open guy and see the ice better,” Kucherov said of his focuses this offseason. “Get under control faster, just things like that. Just trying to figure out the power play and what we need to better and what I can do better, just little things like that.”

Kucherov can become the 101st player in NHL history to reach 1,000 points and only the second in franchise history, joining Steven Stamkos. He sits 35 points shy of tying Alex Kovalev for fifth in career NHL scoring among Russian-born players.

Hagel spent some time training with Kucherov this offseason and learned some new tricks along the way.

“It's pretty special to be able to get the opportunity to learn from a guy like that and watch what he does every single night,” Hagel said of Kucherov. “I mean, I get a front row seat, and it's pretty special. Some people might think it looks easy, but it's not. He just makes it look easy.”

Fans are accustomed to watching Kucherov make those insane passes, break records, win trophies and be one of the NHL’s best players.

Make sure you don’t take that for granted, and buckle up. We should be in for another great season.