Quick Strikes: Tampa Bay Lightning announce Rookie Summer Showcase roster

The Bolts

The Tampa Bay Lightning have announced their roster for the upcoming NHL Prospects Showcase. The friendly tournament is meant to get rookies and prospects playing against their peers in order to better help evaluate them. [NHL dot com]

The roster contains a number of the organization’s top prospects, including first-round picks Nolan Foote (2019) and his brother Cal Foote (2017). Also attending for the Lightning will be American Hockey League rookie scoring leader, forward Alex Barre-Boulet, who paced all AHL first-year players for points with 68 and tied teammate Carter Verhaeghe for the league’s goal-scoring lead with 34. Other draftees from 2019 include forwards Maxim Cajkovic, Mikhail Shalagin and defenseman Quinn Schmiemann.

At the site, Cal Foote came in as our fourth best Lightning player under the age of 24. He looks ready to make a jump of some kind. The question is where will he land? [Raw Charge]

Last season, his first in the pros, he exceeded some pretty high expectations. As you can see he was ranked fourth overall based on just his performance with the Kelowna Rockets. Within a month or two with the Crunch he was one of their top defenders and seeing the occasional shift as part of the top pairing.

Geo’s latest Draft Mulligan is centered around the 2010 draft. I don’t remember much from that year, which I guess was part of the problem, haha. [Raw Charge]

Really, we can go back and cover at least a few more draft classes. We have this one, which was the 2010 class, the Brett Connolly draft that was the first draft after Steve Yzerman took over as general manager. We can also certainly cover the first four or five years of the Al Murray era, too. Most likely, we’ll cover up through the 2015 draft class since, in theory, those players should have finished at least their third professional season, giving us enough data to go on.

The Bolts media talent joined a few tables together and did a roundtable on what they expect from this upcoming season. It was quite the discussion.

Joe Smith from The Athletic spoke to Syracuse Crunch coach Benoit Groulx about the youth that’s on it’s way up and what to expect. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d want out of an interview.

Over in Syracuse, you can tell that the anticipation for next season is palpable when the calendars have arrived!

The Game

The NHL and NHLPA are going through some legal stuff right now. Both sides are expected to come to an agreement on the extension of the CBA for at least this season and next. We’ll have an announcement sometime when Cap Friendly says so.

Ben Lovejoy has announced his retirement from the NHL. I really appreciate the humor in his statement.

The Vegas Golden Knights have expanded their media team, hiring former Sportsnet employee Daren Millard, recently retired goalie (like two days ago) Mike McKEnna, and former Carolina Panthers emcee Stormy Buonantony. [NHL dot com]

The group will join the Golden Knights current lineup of broadcast personalities including TV play-by-play announcer Dave Goucher, TV color commentator Shane Hnidy, VGK Insider Gary Lawless, radio play-by-play announcer Dan D’Uva, Deportes Vegas radio play-by-play announcer Jesus Lopez, and Deportes Vegas radio analyst Herbert Castro.

McKenna joins fellow Syracuse Crunch alumni Dan D’Uva, who was with McKEnna and the Crunch during the 2017 Calder cup run. It’s nice to see those two succeeding in the NHL and reuniting after a few years.

Keeping on with the recently retired McKenna, his interview with the NHL Network was quite fun, especially the anecdote about his last pro hockey game ever.

The OHL has some pretty wild promo nights. Check out their list of what to expect this season.

Gritty is organizing a 5k marathon in Philadelphia. I don’t really know what more to say.