Tampa Bay Lightning open to making moves at the deadline

Lots of decisions to be made

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 7 years ago
Tampa Bay Lightning open to making moves at the deadline
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Tampa Bay Lightning GM Steve Yzerman told NHL.com reporters that he would be willing to make a trade that would help them "not just for this year, but going forward,"

Obviously most teams are looking to make those type of moves come the deadline. Buyers want to better their chance at winning the Stanley Cup and sellers are looking to create some cap space. For Tampa Bay, who are currently not in a playoff spot right now, might be looking to do a bit of both. Their main concern is making sure they have the cap space to sign their upcoming restricted free agents. Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Jonathan Drouin will all become restricted free agents at season's end and they will all most likely be looking at some decent pay raises. Ben Bishop will become an unrestricted free agent but the feeling is with the emergence of Andrei Vasilevskiy, Bishop will not be back with the team and will most likely be traded before the deadline as not to lose him for nothing. 

Yzerman has already locked up some big pieces of the Lightning in the past seasons so it will be interesting to see if he can once again get everyone signed and to how much. With all these key players looking to sign some big contracts, it will push Tampa up against the ceiling of the cap and might make things tight if they want to add some depth. Stevie Y already moved Nikita Nesterov to the Montreal Canadiens for a pick and a player. Nesterov was also set to become a restricted free agent, so that is at least one less to worry about. 

So will Yzerman look to potentially trade one of his big name restricted free agents? We know there have been issues with Drouin, but that seems to have been patched up. However, as we have seem with a team like the Chicago Blackhawks, sometimes you have to let some key players walk if you want to keep your core guys signed long term. 

It will definitely be interesting to see what else Tampa Bay does from now until the deadline.