Articles in Tampa Bay Lightning

He joins Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux and McDavid. Kucherov is the first winger to hit the 100 assists mark.

TAMPA BAY – The Tampa Bay Lightning have acquired forward Anthony Duclair and a seventh-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft from the San Jose Sharks in exchange for defenseman Jack Thompson and Tampa Bay’s third-round selection in the 2024 NHL Draft, vice president and general manager Julien BriseBois announced today.

from Joe Smith of The Athletic,

All great rosters, whether they reach dynasty status or not, eventually crumble, though. The late ’70s Montreal Canadiens. The ’80s New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers. The ’90s Detroit Red Wings. The Chicago Blackhawks, three-time champions from 2010 to 2015, tanked last season. The Pittsburgh Penguins, three-time champions from 2009 to 2017, are in danger of missing the playoffs for the second straight season.

“The salary cap,” as longtime general manager Ken Holland once said, “is undefeated.”

This is where Lightning GM Julien BriseBois is hoping to buck the trend. Tampa Bay already defied the odds in going to four Cup Finals and two more Eastern Conference finals (coming one game away from winning both) over a remarkable eight-year span. That included the stretch of a flat salary cap and two expansion drafts.

However, the reality is that the Lightning are as vulnerable this season as they’ve been in a decade. They’re not nearly as deep. Eight different rookies have made their NHL debuts for them this season. The blue line and the room’s leadership group haven’t been the same since McDonagh was traded in 2022. After ranking fifth in the league during their three Cup Final seasons from 2019-20 to 2021-22 (2.73 goals against per game), they were 14th last season (3.07) and are 23rd in 2023-24 (3.30).

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This is a first for me.

NEW YORK (Dec. 8, 2023) – Tampa Bay Lightning forward Austin Watson has been fined $2,022.57, the maximum allowable under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, for unsportsmanlike conduct during NHL Game No. 398 in Nashville on Thursday, Dec. 7, the National Hockey League’s Department of Player Safety announced today.

The incident occurred at 20:00 of the third period. Watson was assessed a minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct as well as a 10-minute misconduct.

watch the incident below

Less than a minute to play for a shutout.

from Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic,

So if we were going read between the lines here, I suspect the Lightning will try to hang in there for now with what they have in net, but if they need to re-visit that before Vasilevskiy returns, they certainly have the cap flexibility to do so.

The most important factor is that the Lightning don’t want to dig a hole early. Having a good start to the season is paramount.

“We need to bank points early,” BriseBois said. “To set ourselves up to, at some point, try to secure a playoff spot. That’s first and foremost. We need a good start.”

And if the Lightning can do that, they hope to be in a position to add closer to the trade deadline.

In the meantime, and no doubt influenced by the Vasilevksiy injury to some degree, the Lightning have been a fashionable pick by some pundits to slide right out of a playoff spot. Some see their window closing.

I asked BriseBois if his team had taken notice of those takes.

“I think ultimately it’s irrelevant whether people pick us to win the Stanley Cup or pick us to miss the playoffs,” he said.

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from John Romano of The Tampa Bay Times,

The Lightning have been bold when it comes to bringing in necessary help and ruthless when it comes to recognizing when to let familiar faces walk away. In fact, the hope is that the lack of sentimentality is what will set Tampa Bay apart from other teams facing similar questions.

That explains why the Lightning are facing a possible future without Stamkos.

There is not a single Lightning player — there may not be a single athlete in Tampa Bay history — who can match Stamkos’ impact, longevity and popularity in the community. It would be a crying shame if he did not finish his career in a Bolts uniform.

But general manager Julien BriseBois is doing the prudent thing to wait out this season to get a better feel for the team’s direction and Stamkos’ future. Three things must coincide — the salary cap, the Lightning’s chances of winning and Stamkos’ continued value — for another long-term deal to make sense.

I’m pretty sure Stamkos will continue to play at a high level, and I’m certain the salary cap will continue to be a challenge.

The only remaining question is can the Lightning continue to win?

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from Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic,

My understanding is that everything is on the table, but salary-cap implications will obviously limit what they can pull off. They have next to no cap space (like just about every NHL contender), and they want to be in the best shape possible, cap-wise, when Vasilevskiy returns. That doesn’t give them a ton of flexibility.

Vasilevskiy makes $9.5 million against the cap and is eligible to go on long-term injured reserve, which would allow the Lightning to go over the cap by that amount — but then they’d need to get back down under the cap when he’s back. And the bottom line is that Tampa Bay wants to have as strong a roster as possible at that point....

Jonas Johansson is No. 2 on the depth chart, the next man up at this point. He’s appeared in 35 career NHL games in parts of four seasons in Buffalo, Colorado, Florida and Colorado again. The 2014 third-round pick of the Sabres signed a two-year deal at a bargain $775,000 per season with the Bolts on July 1, replacing veteran Brian Elliott as the Lightning backup....

The most obvious unrestricted free agent option would be to bring back Elliott, 38, who remains unsigned and hasn’t retired. Or there’s Jaroslav Halak, who is skating and training in Boston, where he still keeps a home.

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TAMPA BAY – Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy underwent a successful microdiscectomy this morning to address a lumbar disc herniation, vice president and general manager Julien BriseBois announced today.

Vasilevskiy is expected to miss approximately the first two months of the regular season.

from Luke Fox of Sportsnet,

The Tampa Bay Lightning didn't want to be that team.

That team — the first one in 19 years — to lose a playoff series to the Toronto Maple Leafs, to watch the visitors celebrate on your home ice, to have a three-year streak of trips to the Stanley Cup Final blow up in six wild games.

"In my head, we should've won the Cup. Every year we should win the Cup, in my head. Yeah, obviously we're pissed off. We don't want to lose," Lightning stud defenceman Mikhail Sergachev told 32 Thoughts: The Podcast Wednesday at the Player Media Tour.

"We don't want to be the team that Toronto finally got to the second round, and they beat the Tampa Bay Lightning. They didn't go through the second round. But we didn't want to be that and lose to them."...

"We'll see when camp starts how pissed off we are. The guys are very competitive even now. Usually before camp we skate [together]," Sergachev said.

"We'll do five drills and play a game. Usually it's like beer-league hockey. Now, it's intense. Some hitting, too. It's great. Competitive. No one is going to let me walk them on the blue line. It's not acceptable anymore."

read on

from Dan Rosen of the NHL's website,

They went to the Stanley Cup Final three straight seasons, winning the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021.

When the Lightning start training camp next month, they should be motivated and probably still angry about losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round last season. But they'll also be a veteran team that is rested, healed and healthy.

It might be what they need be a Stanley Cup contender this season.

"There was no doubt that the guys were absolutely crushed and bummed we lost, but two days later it was like, 'Oh my God, I need some rest,'" Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "You felt it with the players. Hopefully that will be the positive change for us, that our guys will come in rested, and first and foremost, our goalie."

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TAMPA BAY - The Tampa Bay Lightning signed forward Brandon Hagel to an eight-year contract extension worth an average annual value of $6.5 million, vice president and general manager Julien BriseBois announced today. The contract extension will begin with the 2024-25 season.

from John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times,

Remember this:

The Lightning did not become great until they got tough. Until they got smart. The Lightning did not go on their three-year stretch of near-total domination until they learned that preventing goals was the difference between a season ending too soon and having a floating victory parade.

That’s what this weekend’s comings and goings were all about.

The Lightning sacrificed continuity, popularity and goal scoring in the hope of getting just a little bit harder. Maybe it wasn’t the optimal set of moves, but it was probably the best they could hope for considering their contentious relationship with the salary cap.

Saying goodbye to Alex Killorn and Pat Maroon is heartbreaking. No sense arguing that. Maroon, while not a major cog on the ice, was a fan favorite for his passion and wit. Killorn, on the other hand, was a vital part of the Lightning roster. He not only played an important role on the ice, but he was adored in the community and respected in the locker room.

The only thing worse than losing Killorn would have been giving him the four-year, $25 million contract he got from Anaheim on Saturday.

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added 11:07am,

from Joe Smith of The Athletic,

Cooper had given intro speeches a half-dozen times in previous stops, from his first coaching job at a high school in Lansing, Mich., to teams in Texarkana, Green Bay, Wis., and Norfolk, Va. But this was different. These weren’t kids. It was future Hall of Famer Martin St. Louis. Captain Vinny Lecavalier. Future cornerstones Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman.

GM Steve Yzerman introduced Cooper, telling the group there’d been a leadership change. The next time they made changes, it’d be to the roster. The Hall of Famer had Cooper’s back from the start. All eyes were glued on Cooper, wearing a suit, no tie and a striped shirt unbuttoned at the top.

“The silence was deafening,” Cooper remembers.

The speech was short, about five minutes, but it was memorable. He brought up his background, having started on Wall Street and as a lawyer. He told the team it needed to be close — do everything together. He said they were going to have fun, with coaches allowing music in the dressing room before games and between periods.

And then there was the kicker.

“He told our team it was missing something — and that was swagger,” Stamkos says. “And he had that to him. He said this group was eventually going to get there.”

“He was convincing,” adds St. Louis, now an NHL head coach himself in Montreal. “I felt good about it. I can say that.”

Swagger or not, nobody — not even Cooper — envisioned what was coming. Four trips to the Stanley Cup Final in 10 years. Two Stanley Cups. No coach in NHL history has more wins at their 10-year anniversary with a team than Cooper’s 476, according to NHL Stats. The list of coaches who spent their full first decade with the same franchise is just 11 deep, including the likes of Toe Blake, Jack Adams and Barry Trotz — and Cooper has the most wins of anyone on it. The only coaches to have more combined regular season and playoff wins over any 10-year span are Arbour and Scotty Bowman. There may never be another coach who wins 11 consecutive playoff series.

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from John Romano of the Tampa Bay Lightning,

Little by little, player by player, time has nibbled away at the heart of the Lightning’s back-to-back championship teams.

And the rest of the NHL has applauded.

There’s nothing malicious about that. It’s just the nature of sports. Everyone wants to win, and the Lightning have been buzzing around the throne a lot longer than most. It was inevitable that the salary cap and expansion drafts would eventually take a toll.

And so now fans in New Jersey are cheering for Ondrej Palat in the playoffs.

And Yanni Gourde in Seattle. And Carter Verhaeghe in Florida. And Luke Schenn in Toronto.

The Lightning, meanwhile, are looking at a post-bully role in the NHL.

General manager Julien BriseBois said Tuesday morning that 2023 was a missed opportunity for Tampa Bay. The Lightning, he said, had all the ingredients needed to win a Stanley Cup, but just came up short. And he thinks the Lightning will still be Cup contenders in 2024 and will proceed accordingly this offseason.

All that sounds accurate, but it’s not the entire story.

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from John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times,

The season has ended, and that is regrettable.

What’s far more worrisome is the possibility that an era was vanquished with it.

If you had an uneasy feeling in your gut while watching the Lightning lose 2-1 in overtime of Game 6 against Toronto on Saturday night, that faraway concern might explain it. As if the inevitability of so many nights on ice had finally run down this team of grinders and stars.

Oh, they still have skill. They still have polish, fight and verve. Just not in the abundance of days past. And now, after nine years of superb hockey, you can’t help but wonder if the window has finally come close enough to closing that it will be hard to squeeze through again.

Not that the Lightning went down without a fight against the Maple Leafs in this series. They outplayed Toronto for long stretches, taking a lead into the third period of four games and coming from behind Saturday night to force an overtime in a fifth game.

But whatever separates champions from hopefuls was missing. Whatever sent the Lightning dancing into the night in 2020 and 2021 was lacking at critical moments in Games 3, 4 and 6 against Toronto.

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