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What Your Team Is Thankful For: Tampa Bay Lightning

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As the holiday season approaches, PHR will be taking a look at what teams are thankful for in 2023-24. There also might be a few things your team would like down the road. We’ll examine what’s gone well in the early going and what could improve as the season rolls on for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Who are the Lightning thankful for?

Nikita Kucherov.

The Tampa Bay Lightning are having a modest season by their standards but that hasn’t meant anything for their star winger, who currently leads the NHL with a comical 67 points in 40 games. That includes 28 goals, a mark that’s ranked second in the league. The 30-year-old Kucherov is on pace for a staggering 57 goals and 137 points which would both be career-highs. While the Lightning are working on extending their reign over the playoffs, Kucherov is working on solidifying his spot as a franchise legend, now in his sixth consecutive season of either scoring, or being on pace for, 100-or-more points. He confidently ranks fourth in all-time Lightning scoring but has the highest point-per-game pace (1.16) in the club’s history. Kucherov also leads all Russian players in points-per-game and broke into the Top 10 in career scoring among Russian NHLers this season.

Kucherov is chasing yet another Hart Trophy, four seasons after his 2019 win, and will undeniably be one of the biggest pieces of Tampa’s push for the playoffs in the second half of the year.

What are the Lightning thankful for?

Plenty of offense.

Tampa’s .524 winning percentage is the lowest the team has had since the 2012-13 season but their defining trait remains the same – their undeniable star talent. Every Lightning leader is performing as expected, with Kucherov’s league-leading season being matched by Brayden Point’s 42 points in 41 games, Victor Hedman’s 39 points in 39 games, and Steven Stamkos’ 38 points in 38 games. Even Brandon Hagel has joined in on the fun, recording 32 points in 41 games of his own. The team’s top-six is certainly fueling each other, helping boost up some scoring totals, but the reliability offered by such consistent top-end scoring has willed Tampa through a shaky start to the year.

The quartet has helped Tampa score the seventh-most goals in the NHL this season, keeping the league’s most notorious offense alive despite a year of lesser success. They’re also pulling forward what is a top-heavy forward group, with Tampa boasting four forwards with 30-or-more, and four with 10-or-fewer, points on the season. While depth scoring has been a key piece of many recent Stanley Cup wins, the Lightning’s top brass is showing that scoring will never be too much of a concern.

What would the Lightning be even more thankful for?

Prime Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Andrei Vasilevskiy is the only star with question marks surrounding him. The netminder returned from an early-season injury in late-November. He struggled in his first four games, allowing 14 goals on 99 shots, but bounced back to form with a 25-shot shutout in his fifth game back. He finished December and started January strong, recording a .914 save percentage across his next 13 games, but recently allowed the Boston Bruins six goals on 26 shots, bringing his season totals to a meager 9-9-0 record and .895 save percentage. The 29-year-old has only made 18 appearances this season, and found a strong streak through December, hopefully suggesting that his season struggles are more a result of a contested start to the season than anything else.

Tampa has allowed the fourth-most goals this season, and the sixth-most on a per-game basis, despite facing a league-average 30.5 shots-against per-game. While they certainly didn’t start the year with the ideal goaltending situation, they’ll need to see Vasilevskiy truly snap back to form if they want to continue their reign of dominance.

What should be on the Lightning holiday wish list?

Good health.

In a year where plenty of teams are hoping for a new top-six forward, star defenseman, or starting goalie in their giftbox, Tampa can calmly hope for good health above all else. Injuries have not been the team’s friend this season, with Vasilevskiy, Stamkos, Hedman, and Kucherov missing at least one game earlier in the year and Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak, and Tanner Jeannot all currently out of the lineup. The team is even without one of their few NHL signings this summer, as Logan Brown has been out the whole season with an undisclosed injury. Vasilevskiy’s up-and-down season has underlined just how important being consistently in the lineup is for Tampa’s chemistry.

Tampa is currently well outside of a playoff spot, ranked behind four teams for the Eastern Conference’s second Wild Card. What’s worse – the Bolts have played in the most games of any NHL team. Time is not on their side but Tampa has shown their stars can do enough to will the team forward… when they’re all healthy. They will need to maintain that health for the rest of the season if they want to pull themselves up the standings in the second half of the year.

Tampa Bay Lightning Make Several Roster Moves

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01/08/24: The Lightning have now reassigned Thompson back to the Crunch. The 21-year-old made his NHL debut in Tampa’s 7-3 loss against the Boston Bruins on Saturday.

Skating as the Lightning’s seventh defenseman, Thompson received 11:39 time-on-ice in which he managed one shot on goal, two hits, and had a 32.59% expected goals share when on the ice according to Natural Stat Trick.

01/05/24: The Tampa Bay Lightning have announced that defensemen Emil Martinsen Lilleberg and Jack Thompson have been recalled from their AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, while Sean Day and Declan Carlile have been sent down.

Day and Carlile were recalled yesterday, in the aftermath of Mikhail Sergachev’s placement on long-term injured reserve. As has been a trend for Day, his recall allowed him to serve as a healthy-scratched spare blueliner, but he did not dress for the Lightning’s game. Day has been up and down from the Lightning roster frequently over the last few weeks, and the last game he’s actually played in was on December 20th.

Carlile, 23, actually did get to play and made his NHL debut last night. He skated in almost 11-and-a-half minutes of ice time in yesterday’s game, and while he didn’t end up scoring his first NHL point he did manage two blocked shots, a hit, and a plus-one rating.

Replacing Carlile on the roster (and potentially on Tampa Bay’s third pairing) is 21-year-old Thompson, a right-shot 2020 third-round pick. Thompson is in the midst of his sophomore pro campaign and has had a strong start to the year in Syracuse, scoring 20 points in 31 games. He could make his NHL debut for Tampa tomorrow in Boston.

Although he’s a left-shot blueliner and Carlile’s spot in the lineup was on the right side, there’s a chance that Martinsen Lilleberg makes his NHL debut tomorrow instead of Thompson. The 22-year-old Norwegian defenseman was a 2021 fourth-round pick of the Arizona Coyotes who spent the last two years of his career with IK Oskarshamn in the SHL.

The Lightning signed him this offseason and he’s now playing his first career season in North America. He has 12 points in 31 games alongside 45 penalty minutes for the Crunch.

Lightning Expected To Place Mikhail Sergachev On LTIR, Recall Sean Day, Declan Carlile

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3:00 PM: The Tampa Bay Lightning are expected to move Mikhail Sergachev to long-term injured reserve.

8:30 AM: The Lightning recalled defensemen Sean Day and Declan Carlile from the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch on Thursday, a team release states. Today’s transaction comes after the Lightning were forced to play their last game, a 4-2 loss to the Jets on Tuesday, with 13 forwards and five defensemen due to an injury to Erik Černák and no salary cap space available for a corresponding recall.

Thus, the Lightning must have made a corresponding transaction to fit Day and Carlile on the active roster. It’s possible the team has transferred defenseman Mikhail Sergachev from standard injured reserve to long-term injured reserve, which would rule him out of the team’s next five games with a lower-body injury. He’s already missed six games and 15 days with the injury, which he sustained in the first period of a December 19 game against the Blues.

Day and Carlile now come up to the Lightning roster to provide reinforcements to a badly bruised blue line without two of its three best players in Černák and Sergachev. This isn’t new territory for Day, 25, who was recalled three times last month to serve as injury insurance but did not appear in a game. The one-time OHL exceptional status nod is in his fourth season with the Lightning organization and has made 17 appearances with Syracuse this year, recording eight assists and a +8 rating. He has not made an NHL appearance since logging a pair of games with the Lightning in the 2021-22 season.

For the 23-year-old Carlile, though, this is a career-first. Signed by the Lightning as an undrafted free agent after completing his junior season at Merrimack College in 2022, the Michigan-born defender earns his first in-season recall in the final year of his two-year, entry-level deal. It’s an important step en route to him potentially earning a qualifying offer at the end of this season and remaining in the Lightning organization.

The 2020 Hockey East All-Rookie Team nominee does his best work in transition, posting solid zone entry denial metrics at the collegiate and AHL levels. He was a monster two-way minutes-muncher for Syracuse last season, recording 24 points in 69 games throughout his first full pro season while posting a team-high +28 rating. His numbers this season (three goals, six assists, nine points, +8 rating in 31 games) aren’t quite as strong, but there’s still reason to believe NHL upside exists in Carlile’s game.

One of Day or Carlile will likely draw into the lineup in a third-pairing role alongside recent call-up Philippe Myers tonight when the Lightning visit the Wild. Day and Carlile are both left-shot defensemen.

Mikhail Sergachev Placed On IR

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  • The Lightning have placed defenseman Mikhail Sergachev on IR, CapFriendly reports (Twitter link). The 25-year-old has missed the last two weeks with a lower-body injury so this move is purely procedural; if they back-dated it to the date of his injury, he can be activated at any time.  Sergachev has 19 points in 33 games so far this season.

Lightning Forced To Play With Five Defensemen

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The Fourth Period is reporting that the Calgary Flames picked up trade talks with several teams last week as they look to potentially move on from several pending unrestricted free agents. The Fourth Period cited sources saying that the New Jersey Devils were one of the teams they talked to and even linked the Devils to both Noah Hanifin and Chris Tanev.

The Flames currently have a record of 15-16-5 through their first 36 games which puts them five points out of a playoff spot as they near the halfway point of the regular season. The team will have a big decision to make in the coming weeks as they also have center Elias Lindholm on an expiring contract, and he is reportedly looking for a deal in the range of $9MM annually.

The Fourth Period’s David Pagnotta also believes that teams have expressed interest in Flames defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, but it’s hard to believe Calgary would deal him given that he is in the first year of an eight-year contract and has a full no-trade clause.

Other notes from around the league:

  • The NHL has announced its Three Stars of the Month, with Nathan MacKinnon taking First Star, Auston Matthews winning Second Star, and Connor Hellebuyck being named Third Star. MacKinnon won on the heels of an 11-goal, 29-point performance in 15 games in December, while Matthew’s put up 15 goals and six assists in just 12 games. Hellebuyck’s December performance saw him post an impressive 7-0-2 record, which was good enough for a Third Star.
  • Tampa Bay Lightning writer Chris Krenn is reporting that the Lightning were forced to dress just five defensemen tonight due to injuries and salary cap constraints. The Lightning lost Erik Cernak and Haydn Fleury recently to injury and with no cap space to make a recall, the Lightning were forced to play the Winnipeg Jets one defender short of a full six. The Lightning will be eligible to make an emergency recall after tonight, but due to the language in the Roster Emergency Exception rule, they must wait until the second game to be eligible to recall a player under emergency conditions.

Cernak Considered Day-To-Day, Fleury Considered Week-To-Week

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  • Taking a hit to their defensive core, the Tampa Bay Lightning will be without Erik Cernak on a day-to-day basis, while Haydn Fleury will be on more of a week-to-week timeline (X Link). In all fairness to Fleury, Cernak is the more significant defenseman to miss time, as he has blossomed into one of the better shutdown defensemen in the NHL with Tampa Bay. Averaging over 19 minutes of ice time per game, Cernak holds a 90.1% on-ice save percentage at even strength this season.

    [SOURCE LINK]

Haydn Fleury Placed On LTIR

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  • As part of today’s roster shuffle that brought up defenseman Philippe Myers to Tampa Bay, CapFriendly reports (Twitter link) that blueliner Haydn Fleury has been placed on LTIR. He exited yesterday’s victory over Montreal early and it appears the injury is significant enough for him to miss at least the next 10 games and 24 days.  Fleury has had a limited role so far this season but does have four points in 12 contests with the Lightning.

Tampa Bay Lightning Recall Philippe Myers, Reassign Sean Day

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The Tampa Bay Lightning have swapped seventh defensemen. They’ve reassigned Sean Day back to the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch, and recalled Philippe Myers to fill his spot on their roster.

Day has been on the NHL roster for the Lightning a few times this season, but he has not yet skated in an NHL game. He’s been the team’s seventh defenseman on a few occasions but hasn’t dressed for a game in the NHL since 2021-22.

Myers, on the other hand, has played in one game for the Lightning this season. Tampa Bay originally acquired the 26-year-old with the hope that he could carve out a consistent NHL role, but he didn’t do so and ultimately played in just 11 games at the NHL level.

He’s been in Syracuse for most of this season and has played a big role, combining both size and mobility for the Crunch. Standing six-foot-six, Myers gives the Lightning some more size and physicality at the seventh defenseman role compared to Day.

Sergachev Out Tonight Versus Rangers

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  • Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev took part in practice on Friday but was only able to make it through about half the session, relays Kristie Ackert of the Tampa Bay Times. As a result, the 25-year-old won’t make his return to the lineup tonight against the Rangers.  Sergachev has missed the last three games with a lower-body injury and has 19 points in 33 games so far this season while playing nearly 23 minutes a night.

Lightning Recall Sean Day

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  • The Lightning recalled defenseman Sean Day from AHL Syracuse, marking the veteran pro’s third recall in the last week-and-a-half. Day, 25, has eight assists in 17 games with Syracuse this season, his fourth in the Lightning organization. The former OHL exceptional status grantee has gone 87 straight games without a goal in the minors, last lighting the lamp on April 8, 2022. He’s been rostered for four NHL games this month but has been a healthy scratch each time. Even with Mikhail Sergachev expected to remain out of the lineup tonight with a lower-body injury, Day will likely watch from the box as the Lightning take on the cross-state rival Panthers.

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