Tampa Bay Lightning General Manager Steve Yzerman announced today that his team has reduced its training camp roster by three bodies. Jonathan Marchessault, Cedric Paquette, and Luke Witkowski were all assigned to the Syracuse Crunch.
The moves don’t come as much of a surprise, as the team is required to get down to a 23-man roster by Tuesday at 5:00pm. With today’s assignments, there are now 24 Bolts on the roster. That includes names like Vladislav Namestnikov, Andrej Sustr, and Jonathan Drouin. The first two names are of note simply because neither Namestnikov nor Sustr would have to clear waivers on their way to the American Hockey League. Drouin, for his part, is still nursing an injury.
While there was initially some thought that Drouin would find himself on the injured reserve list so the team could get down to the limit, Steve Yzerman indicated that it’s unlikely to happen.
With that said, it does appear that newly-acquired free agent Brenden Morrow will find himself on the IR to start the year.
What does all this mean? It means there’s still one decision to be made. Somebody is going to be shipped out, reassigned, or put elsewhere at some point. Playing around with the injured reserve list is just delaying the inevitable, if you ask this blogger.
The question that must be plaguing the minds of both Jon Cooper and Yzerman is a simple one: Who?
Common sense should tell you that it will be one of Vladislav Namestnikov, Brett Connolly, Richard Panik, and Andrej Sustr. I can’t include Nikita Kucherov on this list, as he’s flat out earned a spot with his play in the preseason. In Jonathan Drouin’s case, it just seems that the team is intent on keeping him up as opposed to sending him back to Junior for what would likely be a wasted development year.
Among those four, as mentioned, only Sustr and Namestnikov are exempt from waivers. You’d think that would make the decision easier, but Namestnikov has just been so good at training camp and Sustr has never looked out of place in the NHL.
On the other hand, exposing either Panik or Connolly to waivers would undoubtedly result in a claim against. What about trying to trade one of those two? Well, I’m just not sure that the return for either one would be good enough to make a deal palatable.
The worst part here is that all four guys have had solid preseasons. There’s not one guy there who you can point at and say: “Well, he hasn’t done enough to earn a spot.” All look better now than they did at this point last year. All appear to be developing nicely.
What’s the bottom line? The decision makers here are in an unenviable position. Good luck to them.
As always, thanks for reading.
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