Julien BriseBois and the quest to extend the Stanley Cup window

It seems that the Tampa Bay Lightning’s first round exit last spring and subsequent moves made during the summer (trading Ross Colton, losing Alex Killorn in free agency) have tarnished the gleam on general manager Julien BriseBois resume. It is a business that is judged solely on recent success and past performance only cuts one so much slack. In that sense, the criticism is justifiable.

However, you can also argue that the level of expectation those folks are asking him to achieve is wildly unreasonable. All he’s done is take the team to the playoffs in every season he’s been in charge, including three straight Stanley Cup finals, while lifting the Stanley Cup twice. And he\'s done it in an era where the salary cap has remained basically flat and a large portion of his allocated funds are consumed by lucrative extensions granted by his predecessor.

He\'s still managed to find players to fill holes despite those cap restrictions and kept the Lightning competitive in an increasingly tough division. Have there been some stumbles? Surely. There really is no justifiable reason why Philippe Myers is still on the books and the David Savard deal didn’t really move the needle for the price he paid. The Lightning winning the Cup that season does tend to gloss over that Savard deal a bit.

He’s also received some guff for the extensions he’s handed out as he tries to extend the team’s chances to win the Stanley Cup. By comparison, Steve Yzerman had it easy in handing out long, high-money deals to the current core. Who wouldn’t want to make sure Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, and Victor Hedman are locked up to big contracts?

To that end, Mr. BriseBois continued the tradition by making rich men of Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy. After that the choices weren’t so clear. Mikhail Sergachev has the potential to make his 8-year, $68 million deal look like a steal, but it’s not definite. The same with the recent extension of Brandon Hagel. Nick Paul’s deal is fine. If a $3.15 million cap hit for a quality middle-six forward is untenable, then other things have gone horribly wrong.

Anthony Cirelli and Erik Cernak’s long deals raise some eyebrows, but more for health reasons than production value. If those two are in the line-up, then they will earn their paychecks, unfortunately, their recent past may indicate that staying in the line-up could be an issue for the next few seasons.

Mr. BriseBois has long proclaimed that his job is to give the team the best chance to win the Stanley Cup each and every year. His goal isn’t to build the best farm system or to “win” every trade. It’s to get the players he feels can put the Bolts over the top. If it takes trading every first round pick he has, or even every pick he has in a draft, he’ll do it, if it gets him the player he thinks is the piece to complete the puzzle.

Honestly, I respect the hell out of that. Not only that, it’s what every Lightning fan should hope for right now. Will he be the right general manager for a true rebuild (which, like the tide, is inevitable)? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s something we hopefully don’t have to worry about for a few more seasons.

So it does annoy me a little when folks on social media basically point and laugh when he makes a deal. For instance, (not to pick on the guys over at Evolving Wild/ Evolving Hockey as they do wonderful work, this one just happens to be the one I remember)

https://twitter.com/EvolvingWild/status/1676711496787607553?s=20

The question that should be asked is how many Stanley Cups will \"5 picks and Cal Foote\" help the Tampa Bay Lightning win in the next three seasons? The answer to that question is easy - zero. Zero Stanley Cups.

Let’s take a closer look at exactly what Julien BriseBois traded away for the services of Tanner Jeannot.

Cal Foote

I like Cal Foote. I have followed Cal Foote since he suited up as a rookie for the Syracuse Crunch and was Nick Perbix before Nick Perbix. However, at this point, I think we can all acknowledge that Cal Foote is, at best, a third-pairing defenseman. He’ll turn 25 this winter and it’s hard to say his ceiling is much higher than what we’ve seen.

Perbix surpassed him on the depth chart and Darren Raddysh was able to step in after the trade and fill the same role that Foote did with the Lightning. That was likely the reason Mr. BriseBois felt comfortable in including him in the deal.

At the point the deal was made, Foote had pretty much lost his spot in the line-up, so the impact to their current roster was minimal. With Raddysh’s recent extension, the right side of the defense is covered through the 2024-25 season. The Lightning also have Jack Thompson and Roman Schmidt sitting in the wings as rightside defenders that will be looking to make the team in a season or two so the near future is taken care of as well.

The Bolts could have re-signed Foote this summer had they wanted to as Nashville chose not to offer him a contract. They didn’t. In fact it took a little while until the veteran of 141 games eventually signed with the New Jersey Devils for less than what he made last season.

Conditional First Round Pick 2025

This pick is protected, so if the Lightning fall off the cliff in the 2024-25 season and end up selecting in the top 10, they get to keep it and Nashville gets their 2026 first round pick. So, that’s something to look forward to if things turn to hell in the next couple of years.

Hopefully, that’s not going to happen and the Lightning continue to make the playoffs for the next couple of seasons. If that happens then you’re looking at a pick in the bottom half of the draft. That deep into the first round, it’s going to be a player that takes some time to develop. Looking at the last few drafts, it would likely take two seasons for the player to hit the NHL.

Another way to look at is to look at the first round picks Mr. BrisBois traded away in his previous deadline deals. The 2020 pick for Goodrow was used by San Jose to draft Ozzy Wiesblatt and New Jersey used theirs on Shakir Mukhamadulin. The first rounder that went to Columbus for David Savard ended up in Chicago who drafted Nolan Allan. Chicago also took Oliver Moore with their 2023 first round pick from the Brandon Hagel deal. Combined NHL games for all of those players - 0. Mr. BriseBois sacrificed the future for immediate help and it paid off with two Stanley Cups.

Getting back to the 2025 pick, it’s likely you would be looking at the 2027-28 season before this theoretical player could even think to help the Lightning. Any player, coach, GM, or fan that thinks they can predict what the NHL will even look like by that point either has a healthy imagination or a copy of Grays Sports Almanac from 2001-2050. Meanwhile, Jeannot will be around, trying to help out, for at least the next two seasons.

Second Round Pick 2024

The likelihood of a second round pick making it to the NHL drops to 70% from the 94% success rate for first rounders. And if that player does make it to the league, it will take awhile to happen. Plus it’s not really that hard to get a second round pick. The Lightning general manager proved that, and solved a contract issue with Ross Colton, by dealing the center to Colorado this summer for a second round pick. The Avalanche had pulled off a similar move earlier in the summer by trading Alex Newhook to Montreal for a first and second round pick.

The Lightning have been pretty good at developing players that have a similar skill set as Colton, and we could be seeing some of them in the NHL this year. Gabriel Fortier, Cole Koepke, and Gage Goncalves all profile as bottom-six forwards with enough skill to pop in some goals while playing solid defense. Of course, none of them have a Stanley Cup-clinching goal on their resume, but there is time for that. However, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they do make it to the NHL in the future, and should they present a Colton-esque contract issue for Mr. BriseBois he can flip them for a similar return.

Third Round Pick 2023 - #83, used to draft Dylan MacKinnon

There have been 54 players selected with this pick with 24 of them making it to the NHL for at least one game. Of those 24, 13 have played 162 games or more with Matthew Barnaby leading the way with 834. Barnaby (252) and Anton Stastny (113) are the only two players to score more than 100 goals. So, in the best case scenario they basically they traded a potential future version of Jeannot for the current version.

Fourth Round Pick 2023 - #115, used to draft Jason Shaugabay

Wait a minute, didn’t the Lightning draft Shaugabay? Of course they did, and that kind of proves the point that draft picks, especially mid-round picks, aren’t as hard to acquire as some folks make it out to be. The Lightning reacquired the pick by sending Nashville the 2024 fourth round pick they had received from Chicago in the Brandon Hagel trade.

Fifth Round Pick 2023 - #147, used to pick Kevin Bicker

There were 149 players selected with the 147th pick with 11 making it to the NHL. Brandon Gallagher seems to be the best case scenario as he played in 675 games with 202 goals and 193 assists. Back in 2020, the Lightning used the 147th pick on Jaydon Dureau, and he seems to be the typical type of prospect that can be expected from a selection this deep in the draft. By the fifth round you’re basically drafting based on vibes and best case scenarios.

When the dust settles on this deal it’s really Jeannot for a 2025 first and a 2024 second and some lottery tickets. In that sense, it’s not really that bad of a deal and could look like a steal if Jeannot finds a way to get back to the 20-goal mark while running into everybody wearing the other team’s uniform on the forecheck.

That’s also the key to the deals that he makes. Only once at the deadline has he gone for a true rental, and that’s the Savard deal. Mr. BriseBois has made it a habit of targeting players with multiple years of control, and that drives the price up in trades. Again, a strong couple of seasons from Jeannot will turn a lot of the takes on the deal ice cold.

Even if he doesn’t turn into the next Hagel it doesn’t make it a bad deal. Judging moves solely based on a team’s outcome can be foolish. After all, at the end of a season only 1 out of 32 general managers can claim that their moves “worked” and it’s the one lifting a Stanley Cup. Did the Lightning need depth at forward? Yes. Did they need a player that can forecheck and be tough to play against? Yes. Does Tanner Jeannot fit both of those descriptions? Yes.

Jeannot was a player he wanted and he made sure that he got him. Personally, I would rather have a general manager make a deal and throw in some extra picks to get it done, than have a trade fall through because they were hesitant to part with a future pick that might turn into a player that can help a club five years down the road.

Aggressive GMs are going to make bad deals. It happens. But, wouldn’t you rather a GM make a mistake by being too aggressive than by being too timid? Do you want your general manager to stand at the podium at the end of the trade deadline saying, “Well, there were some deals out there, but we didn’t want to pay the price” with that price being a first or second round pick?

At some point, the run the Lighting are on is going to end. It could be next season, it could be three seasons down the road. One thing we can say is that Julien BriseBois did everything he could to keep that run going as long as he could. And that is all you can ask out of a general manager.

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