With just one game left on the preseason schedule and a week to go until the regular season starts, the Tampa Bay Lightning made their biggest roster cut of training camp. The roster was reduced by 21 players with most of them going to Syracuse. With the Crunch announcing their training camp starting on Sunday, it wasn’t a surprise that the transactions were made today.
Here’s how it broke down:
Players placed on waivers:
Simon Lundmark
Olivier Rodrigue
Steven Santini
All three should clear (especially with the amount of players going waivers around the league) and will be assigned to Syracuse once they clear tomorrow.
Released from their PTOs
Clark Bishop
Elliot Desnoyers
Shawn Element
Brendan Furry
Luke Glendening
Kole Lind
Tommy Miller
Zach Uens
With the exception of Glendening and Lind, all of the players in this section have AHL contracts with the Crunch.
Assigned to Syracuse
Tristan Allard
Cooper Flinton
Ethan Gauthier
Dyllan Gill
Jonas Johansson
Tomas Kralovic
Connor Kurth
Harrison Meneghin
Milo Roelens
Gabriel Szturc
Jonas Johansson cleared waivers and will start the season in Syracuse Belleville. Will he end up there? [Syracuse, no. Belleville, maybe] Who knows? [We all know now] Other than that, there really aren’t any surprises on this list. Most of them will have roles with the Crunch, but a few, like Meneghin, might see some time in Orlando.
As always, the reassigned players are only part of the story. What is just as intriguing is the group of players still in camp with one game to go. Outside of the players we know are going to make the team like Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, and the others, there is a group of players still there that are competing for the open spots on the roster.
There are also still a few folks that are going to end up in Syracuse, but are staying around to keep the numbers up at practice and to play in the final preseason game since most of the veterans have hit their two-game limit.
Mads Sogaard will likely back up Dennis Hildeby on Saturday before being put on waivers. Michael Callahan, Jared Tinordi, Matteo Pietroniro, and Max Groshev are all defensemen who will join him on the trip to Syracuse. As for the forwards, Noah Steen, Scott Sabourin, Jakob Pelletier, Lucas Mercuri, Dylan Duke, and Nicholas Abruzzese are probably in the next round of cuts as well.
If all 11 of those players are sent down, that leaves the Lightning with 26 players in camp. Yanni Gourde is definitely starting the season on Injured Reserve and Dominic James will probably join him. Now they’re at 24. Conor Geekie, Sam O’Reilly, Benjamin Rautiainen, and Jansen Harkins are still fighting for a spot, and will probably see some game action. The Lightning could go with eight defensemen to start the season, but with everyone healthy, that probably isn’t likely.
The three players on the bubble are Emil Lilleberg, Charle-Edouard D’Astous, and Max Crozier. All three would have to go through waivers if the Lightning decide to send them down. There is the risk that one of them might be claimed, so it’s not going to be an easy decision.
There are few easy decisions left to get the Lightning roster to 23, and the players who are on the bubble, especially the forwards, have had strong training camps.
