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Lightning core seeks another deep playoff run
- Updated: July 25, 2016
The Tampa Bay Lightning made the 2015 Stanley Cup Final. They came within a win of returning last season and did it without captain Steven Stamkos, who had surgery to repair a blood clot and didn’t play in the Stanley Cup Playoffs until Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final.
The biggest question entering the offseason was whether general manager Steve Yzerman would be able to keep enough of the team together under the NHL salary cap to contend for the Cup again this season and into the future.
But Stamkos signed an eight-year, $68 million contract instead of testing the market as an unrestricted free agent, and defenseman Victor Hedman followed. Hedman, who could have become an unrestricted free agent July 1, 2017, signed an eight-year, $63 million contract extension. Each could have made much more elsewhere but felt he had something special in Tampa Bay.
Yzerman still has work to do. Though he signed restricted free agent Alex Killorn to a seven-year, $31.15 million contract, he still has to sign restricted free agent forward Nikita Kucherov. Defenseman Andrej Sustr and forwards Jonathan Drouin, Tyler Johnson, and Ondrej Palat are scheduled to be restricted free agents after this season.
But the Lightning have the potential to be as good or better this season and beyond. Consider that Drouin, the third pick of the 2013 NHL Draft, played 21 regular-season games for the Lightning last season and is 21 years old. He gave a glimpse of what he could do in the playoffs with five goals and nine assists in 17 games. If he continues to progress, the Lightning could have yet another excellent player.
Here is what the Lightning look like today:
KEY ARRIVALS: Cory Conacher, F: Three years ago, the Lightning traded Conacher and a fourth-round draft pick to the Ottawa Senators for goaltender Ben Bishop. On July 13, they signed Conacher to a one-year, $575,000 contract in free agency in a low-risk, potentially high-reward move. Though Bishop has twice been a finalist for the Vezina Trophy with the Lightning, Conacher has bounced from the Senators to the Buffalo Sabres to the New York Islanders to Switzerland. He needs to re-establish himself in the NHL, and Tampa Bay might be the place to do it. Conacher played for coach Jon Cooper and with Johnson, Killorn and Palat in Norfolk, where they won the Calder Cup in 2012 and he was the American …
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