Tortorella, Lightning eye playoffs

Former Maine hockey star John Tortorella has been around the rinks enough as a player and coach to know the realities of a season. He is the head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning and for those who may have lost track, he is involved in the emerging and convoluted realities of the NHL.

Ever the battler, in front of the net when he played and in the front of the charge as a coach, his work is cut out for the rest of the season. The Lightning have been in a playoff spot all year. On Tuesday night, they dropped out of that select group of eight in the Eastern Conference.

You win with goaltending in the NHL, and all-star Tampa goalie Nikolai Khabibulin has not had a win in his last 10 games.

Like every NHL coach this time of year, Tortorella hopes his ownership can acquire a player who will make a difference down the stretch. While that might happen in the person of a skater, Khabibulin and former Bruin John Grahame will have to get the job done between the pipes.

The reality this year is, the Lightning have been one of the positive surprises in the league. Another reality is that as the NFL Tampa Bay Bucs made their way to a Super Bowl championship, the Lightning lost out on publicity and attendance while football held forth.

The Lightning is not a rich franchise. It cannot afford to add to payroll. Its leading young players do not understand the grind that winning is and have not held pace with other teams now that crunch time is here.

They still have time to make the postseason. For Tortorella, the task is to find the right buttons to push to obtain maximum performance from his team. He can do so hoping the miracle of acquiring a veteran player with playoff savvy might still occur.

The Rangers are a team with lots of money. They reacquired Alexei Kovalev this week in a salary dump by the cash-poor Pittsburgh Penguins. In recent years, the NHL has joined the ranks of MLB in the “rent a player for the playoffs” business.

Many NHL GMs are shaking their heads at these transactions, saying this can’t go on. The rich get richer and the poor drop further from the rest of the pack.

Pittsburgh owner Mario Lemieux says the current salary system prevents him from keeping his stars. “I have to make sure we run this like a business,” he said. He, of course, made millions playing for the Pens – except $30 million-plus of his money is deferred salary he may never see if the Pens fail.

It was Lemieux who brought them out of bankruptcy by banding together an ownership group he heads. Now he is hinting he may have had enough as a player and this year could be his last. That puts the Pens in even greater jeopardy.

They need a new arena, they need more fans buying tickets and none of that will happen if Lemieux leaves as a player. That is another reality.

Meanwhile, the Rangers, out of a playoff spot all year despite having the league’s highest payroll, merrily sign checks and drive the salary structure further out of whack. Historically, Ranger fans have been Yankee fans. Now it appears the two ownership groups are fans of one another as well.

Those are some harsh realities on a league in transition. Meanwhile, all John Tortorella wants is to win.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.