Jon Cooper is trying to downplay the forecast in Tampa. While his Lightning finished third in the Eastern Conference last year, and had arguably the best offseason in all of hockey, Cooper doesn’t want us getting too excited.
Tampa Bay Lightning are ready to make a Stanley Cup run
With a talented group of youngsters and after a strong offseason, the Tampa Bay Lightning will make some noise in the East this season.
Mike Carlson
“All of a sudden you tweak your lineup a little bit and people are expecting the world out of your team,” he said to NHL.com. “It’s funny how that works.”
But despite Cooper’s modesty, there’s a storm coming in Tampa Bay. It’s actually been brewing for a few years now.
The Lightning look poised to take a big step after a big, impressive offseason in an Eastern Conference that's been decidedly dominated by Boston and Pittsburgh in recent memory. But make no mistake; Tampa Bay's progression didn't begin when free agency opened on July 1.
It's a little strange to consider Tampa in the context of a team with a lot of room to grow. The Lightning eclipsed the 100-point plateau last season, finishing third overall in the conference behind the aforementioned Bruins and Penguins. New head coach Jon Cooper did a marvelous job with the hand he was dealt, navigating around an injury to the team's best player Steven Stamkos, its goalie Ben Bishop, and a sticky trade situation with the face of the franchise and captain Martin St. Louis.
Still, at face value Tampa Bay didn't pose much of a threat to the East's top dogs when the playoffs rolled around even with its top-three finish. Another injury to Bishop paired with a horrid performance against the Canadiens sent them packing in four games in Round 1.
But the Lightning didn’t go back to the drawing board. They stayed the course they’ve been on, and continue to build toward a product fit to conquer the Atlantic Division and the Eastern Conference.
The time is now for Tampa Bay.
An ace in the hole
While Nathan MacKinnon was running away the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's top rookie, a potential challenger who didn't play a minute in the NHL was honing his craft in Halifax. And as soon as he laces up his skates for Tampa Bay's opener Oct. 9 against their in-state rival Panthers, Jonathan Drouin will be the odds-on favorite to claim the prize for the league's top newcomer this season.
Getty Images Drouin will spend all but two weeks of the 2014-15 regular season as a 19-year-old. He brings with him the confidence of two downright dominant seasons in the QMJHL: in his last 95 games for the Halifax Mooseheads, Drouin posted 70 goals and 143 assists, or 2.24 points per game. For his full three-season QMJHL career, he averaged 1.89 points per game. His Halifax teammate MacKinnon was taken two picks ahead of him in the 2013 Draft; Drouin No. 3 overall to Tampa Bay, and MacKinnon the top pick to the Avalanche.
But the Lightning decided to let Drouin take another year to develop in the Q before unleashing him upon the NHL.
For reference, Sidney Crosby posted 2.4 point per game in the QMJHL from 2003-05. Claude Giroux posted 1.63 points per game between 2005 and 2007. That's not to say Drouin should have best-player-in-the-league expectations -- and there have been plenty of players to come through the Q posting gaudy numbers only to disappoint in the pros -- but this is the kind of company he's in at this stage.
Watching Drouin play elicits some comparisons to MacKinnon. Drouin has an explosive first step and can accelerate past defenders effectively. On the smaller side at a shade under 6’0, he does well to keep his body between the puck and the opposition, while he uses his low center of gravity to stay balanced on his skates and not get forced off the puck. He’s also incredibly patient in possession, with great vision for how the play is going to break.
This all doesn’t mean he’ll immediately slot in alongside Stamkos, although it’s certainly an intriguing option for the left winger. Wherever Drouin is on the depth chart, as soon as he finds his groove, he’ll give Tampa Bay steady production, something the team will need to compliment Stamkos.
A quick quasi-“rebuild”
The biggest thing the Lightning have going for them is they were already pretty darn good. In this NHL era of a hard salary cap and with a good deal of parity in the league already, a worst-to-first swing on the pendulum is rather difficult to come by over the summer. (Colorado did it last season, but was a bit of an anomaly.)
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Tampa Bay had a relatively low 5v5 shooting percentage last season at 7.8, good for 16th overall in the league. It’s not something they will or should rely on improving this upcoming season, but it’s a number that very well could go up. Besides finishing third in the East last season, Tampa Bay was strong in puck possession, and has been for some time. This is a franchise only three years removed from a seven game series defeat at the hands of the Bruins in the Conference Final, a year in which they were one of the best possession teams in the league.
In the two seasons after that deep postseason run, the Lightning certainly took steps back. They went through a rebuild of sorts, parting ways with franchise staple Vincent Lecavalier and firing Guy Boucher, the head coach who had nearly led them to the Cup Final.
But they began stockpiling young talent, bringing aboard the likes of Nikita Kucherov, Ondrej Palat, and Tyler Johnson (Johnson, for his part, finished second and third in Calder voting behind MacKinnon this past season). While the Lightning missed the playoffs in the two years following its Eastern Conference Final loss, the team managed to dodge a major landslide by way of some heady moves and attention to detail.
These were all pieces that built a solid foundation that gave Tampa Bay a chance to be aggressive and field a contending team. They just needed to tinker further.
Which brings us to this summer...
Before the market even opened, Steve Yzerman and Co. made sure they didn't let some of their own guys walk. Restricted free agents Brett Connolly, Johnson, Alex Killorn, Palat and Richard Panik were all re-signed.
Ryan Callahan, who was acquired at the trade deadline for St. Louis, was given a six-year extension. It was perhaps for too long of a term and a bit too much against the cap, but Callahan would have gotten that deal on the open market, and he's still a player who will contribute every night in some way, shape, or form.
A strong acquisition
Callahan also played a key role when free agency finally did begin, as he helped recruit his former Rangers teammates Anton Stralman and Brian Boyle to move south and sign with the Lightning.
Stralman may be the prize jewel of free agency. While he’s certainly not an unknown anymore, Stralman is a late-blooming 27-year-old defenseman who on paper is the perfect compliment to Victor Hedman, a guy in his own right who probably doesn’t get as much credit he deserves.
Boyle helped revitalize the Rangers’ fourth line last season. He can win faceoffs, get defensive zone starts and kill penalties. Tampa had the 23rd ranked penalty kill a season ago, a unit that could be markedly better with the services of Callahan, Stralman, and Boyle.
The East is there for the taking
For teams like the Stars or the Wild out West trying to climb to the top of the conference, there's a logjam of talented, established teams standing in their way. For Tampa Bay, the East is ripe to be plucked out of the grasp of some incumbent powers. The Bruins should be the odds-on regular season favorites again, after winning the President's Trophy last season, and with mostly the same cast of characters returning.
Pittsburgh is a bit more of a wild card. While there's no use counting out the Penguins until they actually take a major step back, losing Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik (well, the latter isn't a huge loss) and trading James Neal away will shake things up for the Pens.
Tampa Bay is already close, and they’re clearly the most improved team among those sniffing the front of the pack in the East. Bishop was just given a new two-year extension, and if he continues to put up stellar numbers -- no guarantee for a goalie entering only his second season as a starter -- and the pieces in front of him continue to click, the Lightning could strike something big this upcoming season.
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