By Shayna Goldman, Sean Gentille and Dom Luszczyszyn One of the strangest sights of the upcoming season: Steven Stamkos in a uniform that doesn’t belong to the Tampa Bay Lightning. It’s not just that the Lightning let him walk in free agency, either. They ushered him out the door, the latest and largest in a series of cut-throat decisions aimed at continuing their run as one of the league’s most successful franchises in recent history.
The fact Tampa Bay is coming off its second straight first-round elimination isn’t a coincidence. Something needed to change. Will the juice be worth the squeeze? The projection If you think of the league in tiers, the Lightning start near the bottom of the upper class — the above-average teams.
There’s a sizable gap between that group and the rest and there’s some safety in that chasm; the Lightning should be a playoff team this season for that reason. But there’s also vulnerability that comes with being at the bottom of that tier. Advertisement While Tampa Bay pulled off an impressive retool that landed them star winger Jake Guentzel , there was enough veering in the wrong direction to make that move a necessity rather than a luxury.
There were already cracks starting to show within the Lightning last season and while they did well to patch them, they aren’t quite a playoff lock. The Lightning sit at 69 percent with plenty of questions about whether they can still be a Stanley Cup contender at this stage of their trajectory..
