Ramo sent down

Posted Sep 28, 2007 by Erik Erlendsson

Updated Sep 28, 2007 at 07:13 PM

The goaltending decision has been made after the team announced Karri Ramo was assigned to Norfolk of the AHL on Friday. He, along with forward Justin Keller, will fly to Philadelphia on Saturday to join the Admirals for their preseason game Sunday afternoon against the Phantoms.

Ramo did well for himself here and I still expect him to get a crack at it in Tampa at the first sign of a falter should either Johan Holmqvist or Marc Denis slip up.

John Tortorella said he full expects to field his opening night lineup Saturday night in Dallas. If that’s the case, here’s what things looked like in practice Friday….

Blue line was Vinny Prospal-Vinny Lecavalier-Marty St. Louis
Red line was Jan Hlavac-Brad Richards-Michel Ouellet
Green line was Andreas Karlsson-Chris Gratton-Jason Ward
Yellow line was Andre Roy-Craig MacDonald-Nick Tarnasky
And the white line, which might as well be the Norfolk line, was Justin Keller with Mathieu Darche and Kyle Wanvig. My guess is that these two guys either have already been placed on waivers or will soon be in order to assign them to Norfolk. That final decision will be announced on Sunday.

The defense pairings were:
Shane O’Brien and Filip Kuba
Brad Lukowich and Paul Ranger
Doug Janik and Mike Lundin
Matt Smaby and Bryce Lampman

Trying to read between the lines there - assuming Janik has already earned his spot as the No. 5 defenseman (not counting the injured Dan Boyle) then it would seem that Mike Lundin as earned the No. 6 spot as he was paired with Janik for practice. Not a revelation if you read this blog after Thursday night’s game. But still a surprise that Lundin would make it ahead of Smaby and Lampman at this point, even with Lundin being a year older than Smaby, Smaby has one year of pro experience under his belt and Lampman has been through his share of full seasons. Guess it’s another verson of meritocracy at work, something you can read about in Saturday’s paper.

One other note, Tortorella expressed some displeasure with some of his veteran defensemen, and I believe that might be Filip Kuba. Torts mentioned how he wasn’t happy with how some have carried themself on and off the ice. Not to mention that Tortorella made Kuba and his partner, O’Brien, do laps after not doing a drill right as their teammates watched.