The Tampa Bay Lightning appear to have fallen quite a bit from their halcyon days of 2020 and 2021 when they won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. Head coach John Cooper’s team has been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in each of the last two years, and a plethora of expensive contracts may force general manager Julian BriseBois to take significant action if he wants the Lightning to remain a high-level team in the National Hockey League.
The Lightning have a number of dominant players in Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy, and keeping them together may be a part of the BriseBois plan. Veteran center Anthony Cirelli has long been a key part of the Tampa Bay roster, but he is the only member of the core group that does not have a no-trade clause in his contract, per a report from the Tampa Bay Times. That could lead to his eventual trade.
BriseBois said his main goal is to make sure the team remains competitive in future years. That likely means keeping most of the core stars together, but no team can keep all its players together on an every-year basis because of salary cap issues that management must consider.
“We want to stay competitive, we want to continue,” BriseBois said. “We have a nucleus of really good players and we have a great coaching staff. We’ve built a really strong culture. It takes time to accumulate all these pieces and get to the point we’re at now. We want to extend that as (long as) possible in a world where cap space is limited and comes at a premium. You have to make wise decisions.”
Stamkos and Hedman appear to be the priorities for the Lightning going forward
Stamkos, 34, has long been the face of the franchise and he became one of the league’s best players shortly after he was selected with the No. 1 pick in the 2008 Draft. He would like to remain with the Lightning and finish his career with the team he has been with since the 2008-09 season. Stamkos finished the last year of his contract this season and he is scheduled to become a free agent this summer.
Hedman has long been one of the league’s best defensemen and he played a huge role in Tampa Bay’s back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. He is a towering blue line presence at 6-7 and 244 pounds, and he was the No. 2 choice in the 2009 NHL Draft.
He is a 6-time all-star, a 2017-18 Norris Trophy winner as the league’s top defenseman and the 2019-20 Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the Most Valuable Player during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Hedman has one more year left on his contract and he is scheduled to become a free agent after the 2024-25 season.
Stamkos set a tone for the Lightning by taking less money to stay with the team on his last deal. Many of the team’s other stars followed his example and Tampa Bay was able to win championships and play competitively.
Whether the Lightning will be able to continue on the same track is a major issue for BriseBois and Cooper.
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