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New life in the offing for ex-Lightning player
By STEVE LEE © St. Petersburg Times, published September 27, 1998 While he enjoys watching 9-year-old Jack compete on the gridiron, Creighton would rather be in Dallas with his former Tampa Bay Lightning teammates for an exhibition hockey game against the Stars. Instead, he will return to his Lutz home after today's peewee football game to ponder his future. An original member of the Lightning, Creighton was cut Monday, and finds himself at the same crossroads his father knows all too well. Dave Creighton, owner of the Northdale Golf and Country Club for the past 18 years, played his last National Hockey League game in the 1959-60 season. Dave Creighton broke into the league in 1948 -- back when there were only six teams -- and played 12 seasons for the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Rangers. In 616 games, he netted 140 goals and 174 assists. Adam Creighton entered the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres in 1983, had two stints with Chicago and one each with the New York Islanders, Lightning and St. Louis Blues. He totaled 187 goals and 216 assists in 708 games, scoring a season-high 34 goals for the Blackhawks in 1989-90. Dave's playing days ended at the age of 39, he said, so he could focus more on his duties as coach and general manager for the Providence (R.I.) Reds, a minor league club. As the Reds' player-coach, Dave had been named the American Hockey League's most valuable player at age 37. But two years later, he knew it was time to hang up his skates. Adam, on the other hand, is not quite sure his playing days are over. The 33-year-old skated for a team in Germany last winter and is considering playing in Europe or the minors this season. Skating for an NHL team, however, is now a thing of the past. "It just didn't go well and they've got so many players signed," Creighton said of this month's tryout for Tampa Bay at the Ice Sports Forum in Brandon. "I didn't set the world on fire. "I'm not totally in shock about being released. I might have been two years ago. I still feel I have something to offer the game, maybe not in the NHL." Creighton's father, who contacted Lightning coach Jacques Demers to request a tryout for his son, feels Adam did not get a fair shake. With Creighton left behind in Brandon with mostly rookies while Lightning veterans spent two weeks training in Austria, he may have a valid point. "Adam skated well, I thought. He hadn't skated in (an NHL) game in over a year," Dave Creighton said. "He lives here, so he'd like to have caught on here. I just think it was a real letdown for a guy who took a lot of time to get in shape." Adam Creighton, who worked out hard and became an avid bicyclist in the off season, does not regret giving it one last shot. "I'm not going to sit back three years down the road and say, "Gosh, I should have tried to get back into it.' I'm good with it now, because I tried to come back and it didn't work." You couldn't miss Adam Creighton at the inaugural Lightning training camp in 1992. At 6 foot 5, he was the team's tallest player. But Creighton stayed just two seasons, in part because he wanted to be a scorer and former coach Terry Crisp prefered him to be an enforcer. Creighton was a little bit of both for the Lightning. He tallied 29 goals and 30 assists while amassing 147 penalty minutes in the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons. On the franchise's opening night, Oct. 7, 1992, Creighton assisted on the first-ever Lightning goal by Chris Kontos in a 7-3 win over Chicago. Making a team that finished last in the league might have been easier had the Lightning not been purchased by Art Williams for $117-million this summer. Williams upgraded the team by acquiring accomplished veteran forwards Craig Janney, Wendel Clark and Benoit Hogue. The return of John Cullen, who has recovered from non-Hodgkins lymphoma and is sure to be the league's feel-good story of the year, and the addition of No. 1 draft pick Vincent Lecavalier, who scouts tout as a star for years to come, only served to clog things in the middle. Besides Janney, Cullen and Lecavalier, the depth chart at center lists Daymond Langkow and Darcy Tucker. Teams usually keep four centers. With wife, Linda, and three boys -- Jack, Edward, 5, and Dennis, 4 -- at home, Creighton's failed bid for another NHL season may not have come at a bad time. He is reluctant to spend much time away from his family now and said if he plays in Europe or in the minors this season, it will only be for a few months. "Everyone's game is going to come to an end," he said. Who knows? Like his father, Creighton may one day venture into the golf business. After all, Dave said, his son, who had a tryout for the 1993 U.S. Amateur Open, does have a knack for that game, too.
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UTZ -- Weather-permitting, Adam Creighton will be on the sidelines today for his son's peewee football game in Tampa.
