From Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune:
The phrase you hear most often about Koules is “hands on.”
That means it’s basically “hands off” for soon-to-be-former general manager Jay Feaster. His autonomy to run hockey operations – or any kind of tonomy, for that matter – has ended. He’ll still be a voice in the room, but he’ll use it mostly to order pizza and sandwiches for the guys.
Read more about the Lightning’s off-season plans here.
If an owner buys a team, he can do as he likes. So Koules appears to be taking on a Mark Cuban-esque role with the Bolts and that’s his perogative. As for Feaster, I feel like he has been unfairly criticized many times over the past couple of years. Sure he never acquired a netminder after Nikolai Khabibulin, and he has readily admitted that mistake, but he has won a Stanley Cup and locked up the three main players in the Tampa organization (Lecavalier, St. Louis and Boyle). If Feaster does eventually get released of his duties, I’m sure he will have no trouble finding another job in the NHL.
