Tampa Bay Lightning face salary-cap crunch this offseason

Much has been made about the Tampa Bay Lightning’s usage of LTIR loopholes this season, especially after winger Nikita Kucherov returned from injury to lead the team in scoring en route to a second-straight championship. But with the Lightning advantageously using the expiring contracts of both Marian Gaborik and Anders Nilsson to add to their LTIR relief, they won’t have the opportunity next season to do the same.

The Lightning currently sit $3.52M over the $81.5M upper limit, and that’s with an already-depleted roster. There are multiple takeaways from this.

For one, it’s unlikely that any notable pending Lightning unrestricted free agent re-signs with the team. As their priority stands to clear salary, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the 2021-22 Tampa Bay Lightning squad won’t have the experienced depth of years past. While they did well to extend certain depth pieces like Patrick Maroon on cheap, multiyear deals into next season, others like Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow won’t be able to fit under the flat salary cap.

Conversely, it’s likely that the Lightning will rely even more on young, in-house depth to fill out the roster around their core pieces. They’ll need repeat performances from players like Ross Colton and steps forward from players like Mathieu Joseph and Alex Barre-Boulet in order to generate any level of depth scoring.

But what really sticks out is that aforementioned $3.52M number. That’s taking only 16 skaters and one goaltender into account, meaning that the Bolts will need to clear multiple contracts in order to be cap-compliant and ice a full roster on opening night. It’s likely that two out of the trio of Yanni Gourde, Tyler Johnson and Alex Killorn will have to be moved this offseason in order to fit salary constraints. Tampa probably prefers it to be the first two names on that list, as Killorn has been an indelible piece in its top six in recent years.

There are options for the Bolts with the expansion draft looming. While moving any of those three players can be somewhat challenging due to their no-trade clauses, the Lightning can ship an additional asset to Seattle via trade to ensure that the Kraken will take a specific player at the draft. It might be a necessary solution, no matter how tough to swallow it is so soon after a Stanley Cup win.

All contract information is via CapFriendly.