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Hagel, Hedman, Kucherov, Vasilevskiy Earn 2024-25 All-Star Team Honors

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RW Nikita Kucherov (Lightning) – The reigning Art Ross Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award winner was a near-unanimous selection for First Team honors, with only two voters assessing he wasn’t worthy. Although he couldn’t match his 100-assist output from last year, Kucherov was again dominant for the Bolts, scoring 37 goals and 121 points in 78 games.

LW Brandon Hagel (Lightning) – Hagel narrowly beat out Alex Ovechkin for Second Team honors despite the latter receiving more First Team votes. Regardless of Ovechkin’s impressive season, there’s no question the right decision was made with Hagel. The six-year veteran scored 35 goals and 90 points in 82 games for Tampa Bay this season, besting his career-high last season by 15 points. Additionally, unlike Ovechkin, Hagel finished ninth in Selke Trophy voting as one of the league’s top defensive forwards.

D Victor Hedman (Lightning) – The captain of the Lightning was also in a close vote, beating Winnipeg Jets’ Josh Morrissey by a few votes. There are arguments for both sides, but Hedman finished the year with more goals (15), assists (51), points (66), blocked shots (133), and CorsiFor% at even strength (53.5%) compared to Morrissey.

G Andrei Vasilevskiy (Lightning) – After a down 2023-24 campaign (comparatively to his career), Vasilevskiy returned to form in 2024-25. The former Vezina Trophy winner finished with a 38-20-5 record in 63 starts, with a .921 SV% and 2.18 GAA. It wasn’t enough to beat out Hellebuyck, but Vasilevskiy easily would have been named the league’s top netminder in any other year.

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Lightning Reportedly Interested In Signing Jonathan Toews

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In today’s rendition of 32 Thoughts, Sportnet’s Elliotte Friedman gave a brief update on Jonathan Toews’s market as he attempts to make a comeback to the NHL. Friedman listed the Colorado Avalanche, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Winnipeg Jets as likely suitors for the three-time Stanley Cup champion.

Arguably, Tampa Bay makes the most sense of the teams listed. The Lightning are expected to enter the offseason with less than $3.5MM in salary cap space and will have to find a replacement for Luke Glendening on the team’s fourth line. The team could conceivably move Zemgus Girgensons to that role, who’s signed through the 2026-27 season, since he spent much of his tenure with the Buffalo Sabres as a center. Still, the Lightning have highly prioritized faceoff success in that role recently, and Toews’ career 57.3% success rate far outweighs Girgensons’ 45.3%.

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Lightning Sign Jack Finley To Three-Year Contract

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For the second time in a little over 48 hours, the Lightning have taken care of one of their pending restricted free agents.  The team announced that they’ve signed Jack Finley to a three-year contract worth the league minimum of $775K per season.  The structure is identical to the one that Maxwell Crozier signed on Friday in that it’s a two-way deal in year one before converting to a one-way pact for the final two seasons.

The 22-year-old was a second-round pick by the Lightning back in 2020, going 57th overall after being picked out of WHL Spokane.  His time in major junior was limited the rest of the way with the 2020-21 campaign largely being shelved while he managed 50 points in 60 games in his final season.

Over his first three professional seasons, Finley has spent the bulk of it in the minors with AHL Syracuse.  This season, Finley was limited to just 40 games with the Crunch due to injuries but still had a productive year, notching 14 goals and 14 assists.  He also made his NHL debut with Tampa Bay back in January, logging 8:25 in a mid-month game against Boston.

Notably, Finley will be waiver-eligible beginning next season so if he doesn’t make Tampa Bay’s roster out of training camp, he’ll have to pass through waivers unclaimed.  With a cheap three-year deal in hand now, that could make him likelier to be claimed if the Lightning want to send him down if there’s another team that feels he’s worth of an NHL look.

Lightning Sign Maxwell Crozier To Three-Year Contract

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The Tampa Bay Lightning have signed defenseman Maxwell Crozier to a three-year, $2.325MM contract. The deal carries a league-minimum, $775K cap hit. It will be a two-way contract in the first year, then convert to a one-way deal for the final two years. Crozier was set to become a restricted-free agent this summer. With a new deal in place, Tampa Bay now has four remaining players headed for free agency.

Crozier spent the majority of his season with the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch. His reputation for always being involved grew louder over the course of the year as he earned career-highs across the board. He recorded nine goals, 25 assists, and 34 points in 52 games. He also added 75 penalty minutes and a plus-16. All five marks beat out his rookie totals from last year, when he managed 21 points, 43 penalty minutes, and a plus-one in 49 games.

Tampa Bay recalled Crozier for the first 13 games of his NHL career throughout the 2023-24 regular season. His performances were modest – headlined by two assists, seven penalty minutes, and a minus-two. The Lightning must have seen a pro-ready through that stat line, and turned to Crozier for three games of a fill-in role during the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. He earned an additional five NHL appearances this year, but managed no changes to his stat line.

Crozier was originally drafted 120th overall in the 2019 NHL Draft. He spent four seasons at Providence College after his draft selection, and totaled 71 points in 119 collegiate games. He’s also managed 58 points, 124 penalty minutes, and a plus-18 through 110 games in the AHL. Crozier is a tall, rangy defender who engages opponents with his stick or body checks; and makes smart passes once he pokes the puck loose. The Lightning will give him a chance to earn a full-time NHL-role over the next three seasons, on a deal that comes at little-to-no risk.

Lightning Hire Dan Hinote As Assistant Coach

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The Lightning have hired former NHL forward Dan Hinote as an assistant coach, the team announced today. He fills the vacancy created last month when Jeff Blashill departed head coach Jon Cooper’s staff to accept the Blackhawks’ head coach opening.

Hinote, 48, joins Tampa with a lengthy coaching resume that began as soon as his playing career ended in 2010. After playing his final pro campaign with Sweden’s MODO Hockey, he came back stateside and accepted a role on the Blue Jackets’ bench. He remained in the organization until 2018, although he transitioned away from coaching and into a pro scouting role for the 2014-15 season.

The Florida native returned to coaching after leaving Columbus. He spent two seasons as an associate coach for the United States National Development Team Program before returning to the NHL as an assistant coach with the Predators for the 2020-21 season. He remained in that role up through last year, when he departed to accept the role of associate head coach for the Avalanche’s AHL affiliate.

Assuming Hinote directly replaces Blashill’s responsibilities, he’ll take over the team’s penalty kill and work closely with assistant Rob Zettler on managing the club’s defense. Hinote was a frequent penalty killer himself during his 503-game NHL career, averaging 1:50 per game while shorthanded across six years with the Avalanche and three with the Blues.

He’ll now work to maintain a Lightning PK unit that was excellent under Blashill over the last three seasons. Tampa’s 81.5% success rate shorthanded was sixth in the league from 2022-23 to 2024-25.

Nikita Kucherov Wins Ted Lindsay Award

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Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov has won this year’s Ted Lindsay Award for the league’s most outstanding player as voted on by his peers, the NHL announced Wednesday.

Kucherov wins the 2025 honors six years after his first win, when he led the league in assists (87) and points (128) in the 2018-19 campaign. He also won the Hart Trophy that year, which he’s a finalist for again this year alongside the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl and the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck.

This year, Kucherov was the only overlap between Lindsay and Hart finalists – the latter voted on by Professional Hockey Writers Association members. For the player-voted honors, Kucherov beat out Avalanche stars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.

It’s not as if Kucherov needed any more hardware to cement his Hall-of-Fame case, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Russian superstar turns 32 later this week but is still fully in his prime, now capturing back-to-back league scoring titles in addition to his 2019 Art Ross. He becomes the 12th player in league history to win multiple Ted Lindsay (formerly known as the Lester B. Pearson) Awards, joining Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, and Alex Ovechkin as the only active players to do so.

The award stands as nice recognition to a season full of even more milestones for the two-time Stanley Cup champion. He recorded a league-high 121 points and 84 assists in the regular season, the latter of which made him just the fourth player in league history with three consecutive 80-assist seasons. He also led the league outright in points per game (1.55), primary assists (56), power-play points (46), and power-play assists (38) in 2024-25 while averaging 21:11 per game, the second-highest deployment of his career after last season.

Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images.

Lightning Re-Sign Steven Santini To Two-Year Deal

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The Tampa Bay Lightning are keeping around one of their depth defenseman for a few more years. The Lightning announced they’ve re-signed blue liner Steven Santini to a two-year, two-way contract.

Santini recently wrapped up his first season with the Lightning organization. After coasting through the New Jersey Devils and St. Louis Blues’ organization for a few years, largely in the AHL, Santini spent one year with the Los Angeles Kings’ AHL affiliate, the Ontario Reign, before signing a one-year, $775K contract with Tampa Bay last summer.

Similarly to his previous employers, the Lightning stashed Santini with their AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, for much of the year. Despite not being regarded as an offensive weapon from the point, Santini had the third-best scoring season of his AHL career, tallying six goals and 17 points in 58 games with a +10 rating.

Still, Santini received an opportunity to play in the NHL for the first time since the 2022-23 season, and his fifth since the 2020-21 season. Due to an injury to Erik Černák, Santini skated in 11:37 of the Lightning’s win against the Calgary Flames on December 12th, going scoreless.

Even with Nicklaus Perbix likely leaving the organization this summer, it’s highly unlikely that Santini will compete for a spot on the roster out of training camp, even as a seventh defenseman. He should be expected to spend a majority of the year with AHL Syracuse, and be a quick injury replacement should Tampa Bay need it.

Offseason Checklist: Tampa Bay Lightning

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The offseason has arrived for all but two teams now with the playoffs nearing an end.  Accordingly, it’s time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months.  Next up is a look at Tampa Bay.

The Lightning have been consistently strong for more than a decade now and this season was no exception with a solid third-place finish in the Eastern Conference.  However, they were ousted in the first round of the playoffs for the third straight year.  GM Julien BriseBois now has some work to do to reshape his roster but with very limited salary cap flexibility, their checklist is focused more on the back half of the roster.

Clear Sheary’s Contract

Finding cap space has long been an issue for the Lightning and today’s six-year, $14MM extension given to Yanni Gourde only further cements that although it also took the biggest to-do item off the original version of this list.  Now, the team has less than $3.5MM in flexibility, per PuckPedia, the lowest amount of cap space of any team in the league.  With multiple roster spots to fill and a likely desire to keep at least a little bit of flexibility for in-season roster movement or injury insurance, they don’t have a lot of wiggle room to work with.

One thing that BriseBois could try to do to create a bit of spending space revolves around Conor Sheary.  Signed to a three-year, $6MM contract two years ago, that deal simply hasn’t worked out as planned.  After scoring just four goals in 57 games in his first season with the Lightning, the 32-year-old cleared waivers and spent all but five games this year with AHL Syracuse.  While he was better than a point per game player there, that’s not a great return on a $2MM AAV overall.

Sheary has one year left on his contract at that price tag and at this point, he feels like a speculative candidate to be sent back to the Crunch if he’s still on the roster come training camp.  Doing that would clear $1.15MM off their books.  When you consider that $775K of that (at a minimum) would need to be spent on a replacement player on the roster, that wouldn’t save them much.  Meanwhile, a buyout would cost $1MM this season and $500K in 2026-27.  Again, by the time you factor in a replacement player, the savings are minimal at best.  Trading with retention doesn’t open up a lot of room either.

However, if they could find a way to clear the contract outright, that would free up much more money, even accounting for a minimum-salaried replacement player.  Doing that would give the Lightning an extra $1.225MM in space.  They’d still have the lowest cap space in the league but at least a little more flexibility.  Of course, that would require parting with an asset on a team that’s not exactly flush with draft picks and prospects to get a team to take on that final year but with them being this limited cap-wise, it’s a move they’d be wise to make.

Find A Howard Trade

What a difference a few months can make sometimes.  In the case of prospect Isaac Howard, the difference was quite substantial.  A 2022 first-round pick, he didn’t get off to the best start to his college career but after transferring to Michigan State, things started looking up.  And then he found an entirely new gear offensively this season, notching 26 goals and 26 assists in just 37 games, good for fifth overall in Division I scoring, earning him the Hobey Baker Award along the way.  All season long, the expectation was that he’d wrap up his college career early and sign with the Lightning to play down the stretch and potentially in the playoffs.

However, as his college season came to an end, there was no contract in place for Howard.  Part of that was Tampa Bay’s cap situation as their deadline activity left it to the point where they’d only be able to sign him with a couple of days left in the season.  Before it got to that point, he indicated he’d be returning for his senior year, a move that few saw coming.  By the end of the playoffs, BriseBois all but confirmed that they won’t be able to sign Howard.

As a result, he instantly becomes Tampa Bay’s most prominent trade chip this offseason.  They don’t necessarily have to move him as in theory, he could have a change of heart over the next year although that doesn’t seem likely at this point.  They could also opt not to move him and accept the compensatory pick for not signing him, which would be the 31st pick of the second round in 2027 (63rd overall).  But that doesn’t seem like a fair return for one of the top players in the NCAA, making the possibility of a trade more likely.

Assuming that the acquiring team wants to get him to reverse his commitment to return for his senior year, that means that finding a trade this offseason makes the most sense.  The Lightning could go in any direction with a move – look for a piece that helps them now, a prospect closer to being NHL-ready that has plenty of team control, or even draft picks and unsigned prospects to keep or use as trade chips down the road.  Whichever one they pick, it feels like that move should be coming relatively soon.

Add Defensive Depth

Considering the dearth of right-shot defense options available in free agency this summer, it feels like close to a foregone conclusion that Nick Perbix is going to price himself out of what Tampa Bay can afford to pay him unless he takes less than market value or BriseBois is able to open up some flexibility somewhere.  That means at least one spot on the roster is up for grabs.

Internally, there are a couple of options for the Lightning.  Maxwell Crozier has seen a bit of NHL action the last couple of years and had a strong showing with Syracuse this season and could be in line for a more permanent promotion.  Alternatively, offseason signing Charle-Edouard D’Astous has had two strong years offensively overseas so it wouldn’t be surprising to see the 27-year-old get at least a look in training camp.

But that’s not a lot of depth to work with.  At a minimum, they’ll want to bring in a couple of veterans for the Crunch with some NHL experience in case injuries arise.  As things stand, both Derrick Pouliot and Steven Santini are set to become unrestricted free agents next month so they’ll need to be re-signed or replaced.  But finding a blueliner or two willing to sign for the league minimum with a shot at battling for a seventh spot on the roster would be their best option.

Upgrade Bottom Six Depth

One thing the Lightning have had to do in recent years is sign several veteran forwards on minimum-salary contracts.  It was borne out of necessity with their top-heavy spending and they did the best they could out of the players willing to take early deals at a $775K (or close) price tag.  Zemgus Girgensons, Luke Glendening, and Cam Atkinson are recent examples of those.  It’s likely they’ll try to get pending RFA Gage Goncalves signed in around that range as well.

While those players were all serviceable to varying degrees, there was a reason that Tampa Bay was often a two-line team with a third line that could chip in from time to time; the fourth line was largely there to try to play to a scoreless draw when they were on the ice.  It’s an easier said than done idea but upgrading on that level of talent on the open market would certainly help the cause.  In particular, finding some extra grit in one or two of those signings would probably be worthwhile.

BriseBois has tried to work early in free agency with these types of pickups.  While it would be riskier, waiting until closer to training camp when the asking prices of some unsigned players might come down might be able to net them a better caliber of signing.  It’s picking at the margins here but with most of the heavy lifting done already, working on the margins might be all that’s realistically left for Tampa Bay in the coming weeks.

Photo courtesy of Nick King/Lansing State Journal.

Lightning Sign Ryan Fanti

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A strong showing in the minors this season has landed goaltender Ryan Fanti an NHL contract.  PuckPedia reports (Twitter link) that the Lightning have signed the netminder to a one-year, two-way deal.  The pact pays $775K at the NHL level and $80K in the minors.

The 25-year-old was originally an Oilers prospect after signing with them as an undrafted college free agent back in 2022.  However, he spent the bulk of his tenure with them at the ECHL level, leading to a non-tender last summer.  He eventually caught on with Tampa Bay on a minor-league deal with AHL Syracuse although he spent most of the season in ECHL Orlando, putting up a 2.71 GAA and a .907 SV% in 37 games.  Fanti impressed in limited action with the Crunch as well, posting a 1.33 GAA and a .950 SV% in six outings with them.

Fanti is now the fifth goaltender the Lightning have under contract next season.  Excluding the NHL tandem, he’ll be battling for playing time with the Crunch with veteran Brandon Halverson along with prospect Harrison Meneghin who just signed his entry-level deal a couple of weeks ago.  Matt Tomkins, who was the backup for the Crunch this season, is a pending unrestricted free agent and may not return.

Lightning Sign Yanni Gourde To Six-Year Contract

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The Tampa Bay Lightning have committed to their core, signing center Yanni Gourde to a lofty six-year, $13.98MM contract extension. The deal will carry Gourde through his age-39 season and carries an annual average value (AAV) of $2.33MM.

Gourde will take a substantial pay cut for the benefit of term on his new deal. He concluded a six-year, $31MM contract – with an annual salary of $5.17MM – this season. The deal was originally signed with the Lightning in 2019, though he was claimed by the Seattle Kraken in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft. He wound up spending four years of his last deal in Seattle, before a trade at the 2025 Trade Deadline returned him to Tampa Bay alongside winger Oliver Bjorkstrand.

Now, Gourde will lock up his foreseeable future in Tampa Bay. He’s already won two Stanley Cups with the club; serving as a pivotal piece of the club’s back-to-back wins in 2020 and 2021. Gourde defined his dominant two-way style in playoff games with Tampa Bay, and added to it 14 points in 25 games of the 2020 run and seven points in 23 games of the 2021 run. All the while, he served a key role as the defensive backing to high-offense centers like Brayden Point and Steven Stamkos.

It’s that two-way, middle-six role that Gourde will continue in moving forward. He scored a modest seven goals and 31 points in 57 games this season, including 14 points in 21 games after returning to Tampa Bay. That scoring total put Gourde on pace for 45 points across the full season; a mark that would fall closely in-line with his typical scoring pace. He has routinely rivaled 40 points in his healthy seasons, and even managed back-to-back 48-point seasons with Seattle in 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Gourde’s career continues to stand as a testament to what a relentless mindset can earn. He was left undrafted through the 2010, 2011, and 2012 classes – and made his pro debut in 2012 on a minor-league contract. He earned a demotion to the ECHL for parts of the 2012-13 and 2013-14 season, but found unique ways to play through contact and make his 5-foot-9, 175-pound frame stick out. Gourde earned his way back into the AHL where he continued through the 2016-17 season.

Then, he broke out in a dazzling way. Even through Cup wins and a defined lineup role, Gourde’s first full season in the NHL in 2017-18 continues to stand as his career-year. He managed career-highs across the board, netting 25 goals, 39 assists, and 64 points while appearing in all 82 games of Tampa Bay’s season. The marks landed Gourde fourth on the team in total scoring at the end of the regular season, behind three players likely headed for the Hall of Fame in Nikita Kucherov, Stamkos, and Point.

Gourde caught lightning with his smooth-faced season in Tampa Bay – and has since found a way to turn it into 602 games and a decade-long career in the NHL. This new deal will carry him through the bulk of the next decade, and surely the entirety of his remaining career. No matter how Tampa Bay ebbs and flows over the next six years, Gourde’s growth from ECHL scorer to NHL lock will undoubtedly go down as a tremendous triumph against all odds.

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