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.

more ($)