The Bolts
On Wednesday, we reached the top spot in our countdown of the Tampa Bay Lightning Top 25 Under 25. To no one’s surprise, Brayden Point claimed the poll position. He emerged as a star last season and gives the Lightning arguably three of the best forwards in the NHL along with Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos. Matt has the breakdown on what makes Point so good.
We’ll get this formality out of the way first. Point swept the field with the amount of votes he received for the top spot, and this one really can’t be argued. He’s been fantastic since breaking onto the Lightning roster back in 2016. For the writers, Point was unanimously chosen as the consensus top player, the only one too. The readers nearly felt the same way, though, obviously, there are some minor dissenters on the fringes.
Geo continued his series revisiting Lightning drafts with 2011. And while that’s a tough draft to improve on, he found some spots to make some gains. The second round wasn’t one of those spots.
Original Pick: F Nikita Kucherov, 447 GP, 188 goals, 274 assists, 462 points
New Pick: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Did you really think there was going to be another pick here? Kucherov has turned out to be the best player of his draft class. While the first round has turned out to be a pretty good group, especially the top 10 picks, nobody in this draft class has more goals, assists, or points than Kucherov. Props to Johnny Gaudreau though as he’s probably the 2nd or 3rd best skater of the draft class and he wasn’t selected until the 4th round. Even with 50-150 less games than some of the other top point getters in this draft class, Gaudreau is still third in points.
The Prospects
At The Athletic (paywalled), Corey Pronman listed the prospect he considers to be the “most interesting” for each team. His choice for the Lightning wasn’t a surprise.
Tampa Bay: Carter Verhaeghe, LW
Verhaeghe is one of the more interesting prospects in hockey. Not long ago you could have called him a likely career AHLer. But he had a monster 2018-19, leading the AHL in goals and points. Now, the 24-year-old heads in Tampa’s camp as a legit contender for a roster spot despite how many solid forward prospects they have on the way.
The Game
The biggest news of the day was Clayton Keller singing a long term extension with the Arizona Coyotes. The winger signed an 8 year deal for $7.15 million per season causing much discussion on Twitter and elsewhere. Keller was the 7th overall pick in 2016. Last season, he scored 47 points and posted 0.3 WAR. That’s…not exactly the kind of thing that usually gets players guaranteed deals north of $55 million. Especially when they still have another year left on their Entry Level Contract.
Five for Howling has the Yotes perspective on the signing.
The 2019/20 season will be a crucial one for Keller, who had a down year after impressing during his rookie season, registering 65 points (23 goals, 42 assists) in a full 82-game campaign. Keller followed it up with just 47 points (14 goals, 33 assists) in his sophomore season in 2018/19.
This was a trend among all Coyotes players, who managed to keep the team in the playoff hunt right up until the final week of the season despite seeing a number of their teammates miss extensive periods of time due to injuries.
Despite the lower overall production, Keller was still named as the Coyotes’ representative at the 2019 All-Star Game in San Jose, being the youngest player in the team’s history to attend, and went on to represent Team USA at the 2019 IIHF World Championships, earning two goals and two assists in eight games with his country.
But Keller wasn’t the only player to sign. Restricted free agent Adrian Kempe got his deal with the Los Angeles Kings done. LA was able to re-sign the middle six forward to a reasonable deal of three years at $2 million per season.
Kempe’s overall stats were down in the 2018-19 season, recording a total of 28 points (12 goals, 16 assists) over 81 games. He recorded 37 points (16 goals, 21 assists) in the same amount of games in the 2017-18 season.
While the Swedish center can be a somewhat polarizing player, if he does manage to put all of the aspects of his game together — the speed and the hands and perhaps a bit more finish at the net — $2 million could be a steal for the Kings.
That signing leaves 23 remaining RFAs without contracts including of course, Brayden Point. And some other kid named Mitch Marner too.
There are now 23 remaining unsigned RFAs.
These players require a contract to be eligible to play on October 2nd, and must be signed by December 1st at 5pm ET to be eligible for the 2019-20 season.https://t.co/meBv8zXdRr pic.twitter.com/6DruRlJAXs
— CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) September 4, 2019
The PHWPA shared rosters for the upcoming Dream Gap Tour and they are impressive.
HAVE YOU SEEN THESE ROSTERS? 😍 #UniforShowcase #DreamGapTour #ForTheGame pic.twitter.com/MIZI5T5tNB
— PWHPA (@PWHPA) September 4, 2019
And last for today, Rick Carpiniello reported that we’ll be getting less Pierre McGuire and more Brian Boucher on NBC this season. And listen, I try not to get too glib about people losing career opportunities. But Pierre McGuire has made plenty of money in hockey. And between the avalanche of cringe he unloaded on the world during his interaction with Kendall Coyne-Schofield last year and his unceasing commitment to trying to convince us that the most important player during every Stanley Cup Final is a fourth liner, I’ve heard enough from him. I’m looking forward to being able to watch the biggest games this season with a different voice between the benches.
Per impeccable source, Pierre McGuire has been removed from NBC Sports’ No. 1 hockey team, to be replaced by Brian Boucher.
— Rick Carpiniello (@RickCarpiniello) September 4, 2019
