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The whole world knows that the Tampa Bay Lightning are in a tough spot.
Following a season that saw the Lightning finish just one victory shy of their second straight trip to the Stanley Cup Final, it’s on Lightning front office head
Steve Yzerman to find a way to keep this core intact. Well, as much as one can in a salary cap world, anyhow. Among those in need of new contracts are restricted free agents like J.T. Brown, Alex Killorn, Nikita Kucherov, Vladdy Namestnikov, and Cedric Paquette, along with unrestricted free agent headliner, captain
Steven Stamkos.
With over $300,000 of salary cap overages from this past season set to count against the Lightning’s books in 2016-17, and with the cap expected to go up by a slim margin if at all, the Bolts are projected to have just under $19 million in cap space to spend (this according to GeneralFanager.com).
Kucherov and Stamkos alone could honestly count for anywhere from $16 or even 18 million, so to say that the Lightning will have to make some shrewd maneuvers is an understatement.
Tampa Bay will
have to find ways to cut some salary off their books.
(This is where the cut scene to a picture of all of Tampa Bay’s high-priced veterans goes.)
Up front, the Lightning pay
Ryan Callahan a whopping $5.8 million per season from now ‘til 2021, and third-line center
Valtteri Filppula is making $5 million per year through 2018. On the backend,
Matt Carle has another two years at $5.5 million a season, the same for
Jason Garrison at $4.6 million, and
Braydon Coburn just signed a three-year deal worth $11.1 million dollars during this past regular season (read as: he ain’t leavin’ town).
Somehow, someway, and with
Victor Hedman in need of a big time raise this time next year, the Bolts will need to figure out a way to dump at least one of these contracts elsewhere, you’d think.
The obvious one, at least upon first glance, is Carle. The 31-year-old has never really been the player the Lightning thought they were getting from the Philadelphia Flyers as a free agent (Carle put up 15 goals and 137 points in 308 games with the Flyers from 2008 to 2012), and put forth his worst season in Tampa Bay this past year, with just two goals and nine points in 64 games played. Carle was an on-again, off-again presence in the lineup by the end of the year, and sat out the final game of the season, Tampa Bay’s must-win Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, as a healthy scratch.
In addition to the deterioration of his game as a go-to top-four presence for Tampa, ‘cap logic’ would indicate that Carle has been usurped as a third-pairing guy by more affordable talents like
Slater Koekkoek or even
Nikita Nesterov (another of the Lightning’s RFAs this summer). Or, in essence, you don’t pay $5.5 million a year for a player too inconsistent to skate in your top four.
But it’s going to be hard, borderline impossible even, to trade Carle. It’s clear the Lightning tried to find a suitor for the American defender this past regular season, and when that didn’t work, the Bolts seemed to hope that Carle could simply find his groove and return to the level he was at one, maybe two, years back. But that didn’t happen, and there’s little to tell you that it will when the puck drops on 2016-17.
For a Carle trade to work, not only will Carle have to approve the trade thanks to his modified no-trade clause, but the Lightning are probably going to have to eat significant money, as they will not be the only team trying to move a high-priced, aging defenseman for cap relief. This is also a free agent class heavy on veteran defenders, so the idea that there’s some on-the-cusp team in search of a veteran to add to their younger group just desperate to trade for a guy like Carle goes out the window.
So if a trade cannot be made, and the Bolts still need to shed Carle’s salary off their books, a buyout becomes their lone viable option. A buyout of Carle’s two years at $5.5 million per would free up $3.7 million off their books over the next two years, but would also come with $1.8 million against their cap for the next four seasons. Given the contracts the Lightning have to hand out this summer and next, that $3.7 million
for now is more important than the $1.8 million against later.
And if not Carle, through a trade or buyout, it has to be someone else.
Garrison at $4.6 million per year isn’t perfect, but it’s not a killer. Callahan at $5.8 million is steep (and an overpayment), but the Lightning still rely on No. 24 for so many things and in so many situations, so it’s hard to imagine the Bolts finding a trade that makes sense for everyone. So, Filppula?
The 32-year-old center remains the Lightning’s face-off ace, yes, but at $5 million per year, the Bolts need more than the eight-goal, 31-point year the Finnish playmaker put forth this year. In fact, those 31 points are the lowest (full) single-season total Filppula’s put up since breaking into the NHL in 2008.
However, like Carle, Filppula can and does control his destiny with a no-move/no-trade clause. But unlike Carle, I think there are a few teams that would take a two-year gamble on Filppula, which is something Yzerman should at least entertain, even if the Lightning are not going to get a stellar return.
Something the Bolts are going to have to deal with if some vital others are to return for another run.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
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