The Tampa Bay Lightning are Stanley Cup champions for the second season in a row. Assuming the NHL reverts to the normal divisions for the 2021-22 season, they’ll be back in the Bruins’ division next year.
(Next year’s divisional alignment and schedule haven’t yet been finalized, but with Canada starting to loosen border restrictions, it’s looking a little more likely things will be back to normal.)
It’s understandable if your first reaction to that information is one of hopelessness. Two-time defending champs. A team that has beaten the Bruins in five games in two of the last four postseasons, with Boston looking categorically inferior each time. What hope could the Bruins possibly have of getting past the Lightning juggernaut next season?
Well, the one thing that could give the Bruins some hope is the same thing the Lightning manipulated to become even more of a juggernaut than usual this postseason: the salary cap.
For those unfamiliar with or just vaguely aware of Tampa’s cap situation this season, here are the basics: The Lightning were set to be over the cap going into the season, but then Nikita Kucherov -- their star winger who is also their highest cap hit -- underwent hip surgery. They put him on long-term injured reserve, meaning his salary wouldn’t count against the cap and the Lightning didn’t have to free up cap space by trading away someone like Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat or Tyler Johnson.
Then during the season, despite still having virtually no cap space, they found a way to trade for David Savard, then also put Steven Stamkos on long-term IR, and then just happened to get both Kucherov and Stamkos back for Game 1 of the postseason, when there is no salary cap. How convenient! At one point, they were technically $17.3 million over the regular-season cap.
But here’s the thing: the Lightning’s cap gymnastics of this season only allow you to bend the rules for so long (and to be clear, the Lightning didn’t break any rules). Eventually it catches up to you. And unless general manager Julien BriseBois and company have something even crazier up their sleeves, the Lightning are not going to be able to escape from cap jail again this offseason.
They enter the offseason $5 million over the cap with just 19 players under contract. Ross Colton, Alex Barre-Boulet and Cal Foote loom as talented young restricted free agents they’d like to keep around. Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow -- critical members of their third line on these two Cup runs -- are unrestricted free agents they have almost no chance of keeping.
They would love for the Seattle Kraken to take Tyler Johnson -- essentially a $5 million fourth-liner at this point -- off their hands in the expansion draft, but that’s not going to happen without trading other assets to Seattle, and they’re not exactly full of those as they don’t have a first- or second-round pick this year.
The Kraken could instead end up with a better high-salary player like Killorn, Palat or Yanni Gourde, but those are all players who play bigger roles and whose departures would hurt Tampa on the ice even if it would help cap-wise.
Regardless, the Lightning are going to have to move at least one and maybe two good players -- in addition to not re-signing Coleman and Goodrow -- just to get under the cap and be able to fill out a roster. Star center Brayden Point’s contract is up after next season, so they also have to plan for his next deal.
Ryan McDonagh is another player to watch. The veteran defenseman is 32 and still has five years left on his contract with a $6.75 million cap hit. He’s also still really good and was second on the team in ice time this postseason. The Lightning don’t want to move him by any means, but again: someone’s getting traded.
Look, the Lightning are still going to be really good next year. We’re not talking about some sort of teardown that’s going to have them battling just to get into the playoffs or anything like that. But we are talking about a few pretty significant losses that could help level the playing field a bit.
The Bruins need to focus on their own offseason and improving their own roster first and foremost, but trying to catch the Lightning may not be as hopeless an endeavor as it seems. The Bruins have the cap space to improve, while the Lightning are bound to be at least a little weaker.
As dominant as the Lightning have looked these last two postseasons, let’s not hand them a third straight Cup just yet.