After a busy free agent weekend it appears that the Tampa Bay Lightning are, for the most part, set with their roster for the 2023-24 season. There might be some tinkering here and there depending on who wins roster spots in training camp, but the overall idea of what this team will look like is there.
The first impression is that it will be…okay. General manager Julien BriseBois did not make any flashy signings, but he did go about retooling the bottom-six while mostly staying put on defense. In a bit of a different move than in previous offseasons, he also went with a relatively young and unproven back-up in net for Andrei Vasilevskiy.
On paper this team should be a little faster than the one that took the ice last season, with a heavy reliance on forechecking. The bulk of the roster will be veteran-heavy, but there is still a chance or two for a young player to prove they belong on the roster.
Here is a look at the moves that Mr. BriseBois made on Saturday and Sunday. Note, Logan Brown and Malcolm Chafee have been left out of the conversation since Mr. BriseBois indicated the plan is that they are likely starting the season in Syracuse.
Signed
Conor Sheary – F – 3 years, $6,000,000
Josh Archibald – F – 2 years, $1,600,000
Luke Glendening – F – 2 years, $1,600,000
Jonas Johansson – G- 2 years, $1,550,000
Calvin de Haan – D – 1 year, $775,000
Officially Departed
Corey Perry – F – 1 year, $4,000,000
Ian Cole – D – 1 year, $3,000,000
Alex Killorn – F – 4 years, $25,000,000
Pat Maroon – F – Traded (Lightning retaining $200,000)
Ross Colton – F – Traded (pending RFA with Colorado)
A quick look at what the lines might look next season with the assumption that Tanner Jeannot signs for about $2,500,000 and that they don’t make any more moves.
All told, Mr. BriseBois laid out a total of 10 years and $11,525,000 in contracts. The added cap hits for the next year total $5,150,000. Not a bad bit of bargain shopping.
The glaringly obvious issue at first glance is that they will miss Alex Killorn’s production on the second line. The long-time Bolt had a late-career renaissance that saw him average 26 goals and 61 points over the last two seasons, numbers that were well above his career average. He parlayed that into a four-year deal with the Anaheim Ducks, but left the Lightning with a pretty big hole in their offense.
Rather than plug it with just one player, the Lightning are taking a piece-meal approach and hoping a group of players can replace that production. In theory they also lost Ross Colton’s 16 goals and Corey Perry’s 12 goals from last season. That offense starts to add up pretty quickly.
At first blush Conor Sheary likely files into the spot vacated by Killorn on the second line, but there will likely be a heavy bit of tinkering in training camp and throughout the season. Even with an ideal roster Coach Jon Cooper loves to throw his lines in a blender on occasion, so there will likely be a bit of a feeling out process early in the season to find the right combinations.
From the moves they made it is apparent that Mr. BriseBois is willing to sacrifice offense for an improved defense. Last season the Lightning finished 14th in the league in goals allowed with 252. To compare that to their Stanley Cup Final runs they finished 10th in 2019-20 (194 GA), 6th in 2020-21 (145 GA), and 6th in 2021-22 (228 GA).
On offense they were 8th in goals scored with 280, a slight down tick from the previous season when they finished with 285. If the team stays in the 270-280 goals scored range, but can get the goals against back to previous levels, they should be okay. Coach Cooper would be thrilled to see the goals against per game dip back under the 3.07 they averaged last season. They averaged 2.73 GA/GP during the three-year run to the Cup Finals. That’s a number he could live with.
Mr. BriseBois’ plan of attack for getting the Lightning back to being a top ten or even top five defensive team was to find players on the free agent market that were quick and forechecked hard. Josh Archibald and Conor Sheary fall into that category. Glendening maybe not so much with speed, but he will be out there on the ice for the important face-offs.
The Lightning were a fairly balanced offense last year, generating chances both off the rush and with a cycled forecheck. However, in previous years they have been a better forechecking team and it seems the team wants to return to that identity based on the players they picked up over the last few days.
After a really impactful 2021-22 season, the School Bus Line of Pat Maroon, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Corey Perry aged rapidly last year and they couldn’t sustain the pressure in the offensive zone that served them so well when they first played together. A re-made fourth line with Glendenning, Eyssimont, and Archibald (or possibly a Crunch call-up) should provide a little more speed on the ice and a return to the “hard to play against” attitude that was a hallmark of the Cup-winning teams.
The improved third line should play a similar role, along with the possibility of adding a few goals here and there. Nick Paul is a 15-20 goal guy, Tanner Jeannot has that possibility, and Archibald can likely kick in 5-7 goals. It’s not quite the return of Yanni Gourde and Co., but that new line would have shadows of those days.
In theory, the additions should also lessen the energy expended on defense by the top two lines, freeing them up to do what they do best….score goals. If either the third or fourth line can become a true shutdown line, then Coach Cooper doesn’t have to ask Brandon Hagel or Anthony Cirelli to play that role.
Nor would we have to see them killing as many penalties (except for Cirelli). The signings Mr. BriseBois made were not only geared towards improving the 5v5 defense, but also shorthanded play. The Bolts struggled on the penalty kill for most of the season finishing 15th in the league during the regular season at 79.7%.
The playoffs were worse as their 71.4% success rate shorthanded was 13th out of the 16 teams in the postseason. Six of the 23 goals they allowed (26%) were while Toronto was on the power play. That is simply untenable for a team that has Stanley Cup desires. The additions of Glendening, Sheary, Archibald, and Calvin de Haan should lessen the short-handed workload of Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, and Hagel.
There may have been an unintended consequence of a tight cap and the moves he had to make is that Mr. BriseBois traded the two most penalized players on the team last year in Maroon (150 PIM) and Corey Perry (95 PIM). Number three on that list, Ian Cole (61 PIM), also left in free agency. Maroon and Perry were both in the top 10 in major penalties last season with 12 and 9 respectively, so a few of those minutes were offset by the other team having a player in the box. That’s reflected in the fact that despite finishing third in overall penalty minutes as a team with 995, they were just twelfth in times short-handed at 261.
Glendenning and Archibald won’t be in competition for a Lady Byng anytime soon, but they aren’t prone to quite as many penalties as the players they are replacing. Conor Sheary acquired just 22 penalty minutes all year so he should be on the ice quite a bit. There were a few games last year where, even though the penalty kill did its job, the Bolts took too many penalties and it upset the flow of their 5v5 games. So it would behoove them to stay out of the box a little more this season.
As for the defense, there were hopes and dreams out there that he could finagle a trade for Erik Karlsson or sign Oliver Ekman-Larsson. The Lightning don’t have the capital to pry Karlsson from San Jose, and while they could have afforded the 1-year, $2.5 million deal OEL signed with Florida, it might not have been the best fit and it would have tied Mr. BriseBois’ hands in regards to other moves he wanted to make.
Calvin de Haan is fine as a third-pair option. He does what the Lightning want their defensemen to do – block shots and hit people. The 11-year veteran will likely post similar numbers as to what Ian Cole did last year.
It was kind of odd to see Mr. BriseBois swerve a bit when it came to the back-up role. In the past he’s gone with veteran netminders in Brian Elliott and Curtis McIllney that were willing to play on a cheap contract in exchange for a shot at the Cup. So there must be something they see in the 27-year-old Johansson with just 35 career NHL games that they like since they are going to be entrusting him with 20-25 starts next season.
Was it a free agent signing storm that Lightning fans should be over the moon about? No, not really, but based on what he could do, Mr. BriseBois did a pretty good job. He obviously identified a problem he had with last year’s squad and had a plan to rectify the issues. How good of a plan it is depends on how the players perform on the ice.
Therein lies the biggest problem for the Lightning. As a team that is up against it cap-wise, their margin for error is razor thin. If they want to find themselves deep in a playoff run there can’t be any mistakes in their signings or any drop off in performance from a player. If a free agent signing flames out, or if a core piece has an off season, there isn’t really a back-up plan. The Lightning are basically dancing across a wire over a pit of alligators with no safety net. There is no way to buy their way out of problems and their ability to make a move at the deadline, while not impossible, is severely hampered.
The initial grade for the offseason so far is a B-. Julien BriseBois went to the bargain bin to find players that, in theory, will make the Lightning a harder team to play against. He rolled the dice that improving the defense at the expense of offense will dictate to more wins in the regular season and playoffs. Now all he can do is sit back and hope the players he brought in meet or exceed his expectations.
