Twenty five years ago Tampa Bay Lightning founder and general manager Phil Esposito claimed he couldn’t read a fax. It was a rather blatant ploy (though not as blatant as Fernando Tatis Jr.’s “ringworm” ploy) to buy time to work out a deal to trade young center Chris Gratton for something more than the four draft picks they would receive from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for not matching the offer sheet they had signed him to earlier in the week.
For those who might not remember one of the more infamous moments in Lightning history, the Lightning in 1997 were a team looking for a new owner.