from Jonathan Willis of Sportsnet,
In a span of just four years, Yzerman dismantled the team. Thirteen of 14 forwards who appeared in the post-season were sent away with only a then-21-year-old Steven Stamkos spared. A similar fate was visited upon the back end with 7-of-8 defencemen and both goalies were axed with 20-year-old Victor Hedman the sole survivor.
Hedman and Stamkos is an awfully nice starting point. A lot of teams would consider themselves lucky to be starting out of the gates with a franchise centre and a franchise defenceman, plus the rest of the talent that Yzerman had as trade bait. Yzerman continued to look for ways to improve going through an aggressive search for talent.
Al Murray, a scouting director with the Los Angeles Kings, was brought in to run Tampa Bay’s draft efforts in August 2010. In his first draft, the Lightning had just two picks in the top-100 and six picks overall, but Murray found four players on the team today, including Vladislav Namestnikov (first round), wingers Nikita Kucherov (second round) and Ondrej Palat (seventh round) and defenceman Nikita Nesterov (fifth round). Six players in all on the 2015 Lightning are Murray picks, including Cedric Paquette (fourth round).
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