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Are The Calgary Flames Eyeing Ben Bishop? |
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Follow me on Twitter @ToddCordell
Another day, another goaltender linked to the Calgary Flames.
This time around it is 29-year-old Ben Bishop of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
While prying a Vezina candidate away from a Stanley Cup contender sounds unlikely it's not as big of a stretch as it seems.
Ben Bishop is set to become an unrestricted free agent a year from now and will be in line for a raise. He will be nearly impossible for the Lightning to accommodate as Nikita Kucherov, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, Alex Killorn, Jonathan Drouin and Victor Hedman all need next contracts this summer or next. Each player will get a significant raise, too, which makes things very difficult for the Lightning; especially given some of the bad contracts they have on their books ($5.8M for Ryan Callahan, $5.5M for Matt Carle, etc).
Another factor that could lead to Bishop's availability is that only one goaltender can be protected in next year's expansion draft. Should Bishop be re-signed the Lightning would be forced to leave 21-year-old Andrei Vasilevskiy exposed. That doesn't seem like a good idea.
The Lightning definitely won't give a goaltender of Bishop's quality away for pennies on the dollar but it seems inevitable they'll have to part with him at some point in the next year.
Doing it now while his value is high - he's probably going to finish 2nd in Vezina voting - makes sense.
Whether Bishop ends up in Calgary or not remains to be seen but I don't think the possibility is unlikely as it may seem.
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Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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