That the Tampa Bay Lightning are one of two teams still competing for the Stanley Cup is a testament to the efforts of many people. Head coach Jon Cooper and his roster have achieved amazing things, both in the regular season and in the playoffs. Team owner Jeff Vinik perhaps the most credit; not only does he finance the organization but he ushered in an era of competence after the debacle that was the joint ownership of Len Barrie and Oren Koules.
One of Vinik’s most important moves was also one of his earliest: the installation of then-Detroit Red Wings vice-president Steve Yzerman as general manager. Under Yzerman’s watch, the Lightning have evolved into one of the NHL’s best franchises, with the team imitating many of the practices that made the Red Wings so successful, but also taking their own unique approaches to the game.
Yzerman also rebuilt the team’s roster. Initially, he found a measure of success — using mostly holdovers from the previous regime. The 2010-11 Lightning made it all the way to the third round before losing to Boston in seven games and it wouldn’t have taken much for that series to have gone the other way. That team crashed and burned and Yzerman decided to go the route of a full-fledged rebuild.
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He didn’t mess around. In a span of just four years, Yzerman dismantled the team. Thirteen of 14 forwards who appeared in the post-season were sent away with only a then-21-year-old Steven Stamkos spared. A similar fate was visited upon the back end with 7-of-8 defencemen and both goalies were axed with 20-year-old Victor Hedman the sole survivor.
Hedman and Stamkos is an awfully nice starting point. A lot of teams would consider themselves lucky to be starting out of the gates with a franchise centre and a franchise defenceman, plus the rest of the talent that Yzerman had as trade bait. Yzerman continued to look for ways to improve going through an aggressive search for talent.
Al Murray, a scouting director with the Los Angeles Kings, was brought in to run Tampa Bay’s draft efforts in August 2010. In his first draft, the Lightning had just two picks in the top-100 and six picks overall, but Murray found four players on the team today, including Vladislav Namestnikov (first round), wingers Nikita Kucherov (second round) and Ondrej Palat (seventh round) and defenceman Nikita Nesterov (fifth round). Six players in all on the 2015 Lightning are Murray picks, including Cedric Paquette (fourth round).
The Bolts have also been famously good at getting value from undrafted players. First line centre Tyler Johnson is the obvious choice, but J.T. Brown and Andrej Sustr were also both amateur free agent adds. Another free agent signing out of junior was Cory Conacher, who made the NHL with the Lightning before being dealt to Ottawa.
Put it all together and the Lightning’s amateur procurement department and development system managed to acquire and develop the team’s first line — all without spending a first-round draft pick. The scouting staff deserves significant credit, but so does the development side of the organization. We can flag Cooper, formerly their AHL head coach, and assistant GM Julien BriseBois (another Yzerman hire) as particularly worthy of credit on that front.
Yzerman’s Lightning have also used unrestricted free agency intelligently. Frowned upon as the time in the summer when general managers spend like drunken sailors, the NHL’s annual UFA period does offer value to teams that know how to look, and on the whole Tampa Bay has done well. One half of the team’s top pairing (Anton Stralman) as well as the club’s No. 2 centre (Valtteri Filppula) were added for the relatively modest annual cost of $9.5 million. Not all of the teams deals were such clear wins, but Brian Boyle ($2 million) and Matt Carle ($5.5 million) aren’t ridiculously priced for their value to the team and fourth-line winger Brenden Morrow only got a one-year deal.
Tampa Bay has at times been aggressive in the trade market. Starting goalie Ben Bishop came over from the Senators in exchange for undrafted free agent Conacher and a fourth-round pick. The Lightning sold high on Conacher, who quickly found his way out of the NHL. Another shrewd decision was made at last year’s draft, where Yzerman was able to land Jason Garrison and a seventh-round selection from Vancouver in exchange for a second-round pick.
Yzerman has had some significant advantages in Tampa Bay. He’s had stable ownership and he inherited both a top-end centre and a top-end defenceman. But from that starting point he’s done marvelous things. The Lightning simply do everything well. They draft and sign young players and then develop them, they make smart decisions in free agency and they have a habit of acquiring useful players in trade.
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It’s been a remarkable turnaround, and one that should give hope to fans of the NHL’s most poorly run teams. Just over five years ago the Lightning were a basket case, run by feuding owners who installed a television personality as the club’s head coach. Just over two years ago, the Lightning had been forced to fire Guy Boucher after two consecutive disastrous seasons and rumours of locker room discontent.
Today they are a model NHL team, a club competing in the Stanley Cup Final and with the obvious potential to do so for most of the next decade. As the Lightning show, with solid ownership and solid management anything can happen and it can happen awfully fast.