No matter which way the Steven Stamkos signing breaks down there will be plenty of discussion regarding whether he remains in Tampa or moves on.
Over the next couple of summers Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman will shape the future as the club’s younger talent all begins to achieve RFA or UFA status.
Barely mentioned during the discussions regarding the Stamkos matter is the fact a player possibly even more valuable to the team, Victor Hedman, becomes a UFA after next season. Fact is, Hedman could demand even a larger payout than Stamkos commands.
In addition to Hedman, Yzerman will need to make a call this summer as Alex Killorn, JT Brown, Vladislav Nemestnikov, Nikita Kucherov, Cedric Paquette and Nikita Nesterov all have RFA status.
The summer of 2017-18 is no less as busy for Yzerman when the aforementioned Hedman UFA status combines with the RFA status of Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, Jonathan Drouin, Andrej Sustr and Andrei Vasilevskiy. On top of the player’s mentioned Vezina Trophy finalist Ben Bishop also becomes a UFA during that summer.
Tampa currently sits with slightly over $50 million in contract obligations, so something has to give. Perhaps the tipping point is on defense where the club has $14.8 obligated to the trio of Matthieu Carle, Jason Garrison and Braydon Coburn. It is possible one of those players is moved at a discount to provide some breathing room.
There is speculation that Tampa hasn’t dealt the rights to Stamkos because they are negotiating with him. As I am not in the corporate office of the Lightning perhaps that is true. However, I don’t know how Tampa could sign their captain without other drastic moves taking place, which would include moving younger talent.
It may simply be the franchise doesn’t want to take the PR hit to move their captain without appearing to do all they can do to retain him.
Las Vegas in, Quebec no-go
When the news broke a couple of weeks ago that the league would add Las Vegas as a franchise but not Quebec City, initially I was disappointed. But after some time to think about it this is what I think is going on.
Las Vegas is set and can pay the $500 million to join the league. That fee would have been onerous to Quebec City. Adjusted for the currency rate the “Nordiques” would need to pay $640+ million Canadian.
What the league can do is work on finding another western city (Seattle?) to join the league say in 2019-2020 and meanwhile use Quebec (or maybe Ontario) as transfer threats to existing cities.
I think in the end due to the Canadian dollar that Quebec may need to transfer a team to their province.
It is too bad as I was so looking forward to the return of Quebec.
Calgary
It will be hard for me not to wish the Flames well this season after they added Glen Gulutzan as their coach.
My days with Gulutzan go back to when he was a player in the WCHL. Gulutzan was always willing to discuss matters with me and he was a solid guy to work with while I was covering the WCHL.
Now he joins Brad Treliving; another guy who did his best to support alternative print and e-media during his days in the minor leagues. Brian Burke also treated me very well while I was working on small publications and web sites. Frankly Burke did not need to do any interviews with media the size I was working on at the time.
All three of those guys took the time to talk to In The Crease, The Southwestern Hockey News, Just Hockey and the Pro Hockey News (the larger of all the previously mentioned publications) when they did not really have to.
Prediction for this draft? Treliving comes out of the weekend in New York with a new starting goaltender. It may cost him his number one pick, but it will happen.
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