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The Tampa Bay Lightning capped off their week with re-signing forward, Ondrej Palat, to a five-year deal, avoiding the scheduled arbitration hearing. This came only four days after the Bolts locked up their other big restricted free-agent, Tyler Johnson, with a new seven-year contract.

Now that Palat and Johnson are locked up for the long term, it appears as though Steve Yzerman and the rest of the Lightning front office are done making moves for the offseason.

#tblightning Yzerman indicated Palat signing is the last of his planned offseason moves.

— Joe Smith (@TBTimes_JSmith) July 14, 2017

To this point, the Bolts have had a pretty busy summer. They have traded away Jonathan Drouin for Mikhail Sergachev, worked out a deal to send Jason Garrison to Vegas via the expansion draft, signed free agents Dan Girardi and Chris Kunitz, re-signed players such as Palat, Johnson, Peter Budaj, Slater Koekkoek, and Jake Dotchin, and selected prospects in the entry draft.

You may not agree with all of the moves Tampa Bay has made, but they have done what they felt was necessary and it is hard to come up with any other realistic maneuvers the team can make. Of course, there is always the chance that another team approaches Yzerman with a trade he simply cannot turn down. However, there is nothing out there that points to something like that happening anytime soon.

Now that we have reached mid-July, it is common for most NHL franchises to calm down and the Lightning have accomplished what they needed to reach that point.

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