2023-24 season: 45-29-8, 4th in Atlantic Division, 6th in Eastern Conference, 13th in league, lost Eastern Conference Round 1 to Florida 4-1.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are in strange territory this season that they haven't been in ever before. They're good enough to be barely hanging on, but they missed the 2nd Round in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2012-13 and 2013-14. Steve Yzerman constructed a masterpiece of a dynastic team throughout the 2010s, one that made the Eastern Conference Finals 6 times out of 8 seasons, and won the Stanley Cup in back-to-back season and came 2 wins short of a dynasty. But he left the team in 2019, and therefore was never able to legally take credit for the Stanley Cup teams he built.
Julien BriseBois has succeeded Yzerman in that position, and he has managed horribly. Even though Jim Benning was still managing the Canucks until 2022, I haven't seen any GM with worse asset management skills than him in the last 5 years. He traded a 1st, a 3rd, and a 4th round pick for David Savard, an obvious overpayment for a depth option on defense who had a -8 in 14 games and didn't do anything until the playoffs before leaving for Montreal in the offseason. They also gave up 2 1st round picks and Taylor Raddysh and Boris Katchouk for Brandon Hagel and 2 4th round picks. They gave up Barclay Goodrow for a 7th round pick after having used a 1st round pick to acquire him, and that season they also gave up a 2nd round pick and Tyler Johnson to Chicago for Brent Seabrook's contract, and traded Ryan McDonagh to Nashville for Philippe Myers and Grant Mismash. They also gave up Cal Foote and 5 draft picks for Tanner Jeannot before flipping him to LA 1 year later for a 2nd and a 4th. This offseason they also reacquired Ryan McDonagh and Edmonton's 4th round pick for a 2nd and a 7th, and they traded Mikhail Sergachev to Utah for J.J. Moser, Conor Geekie, a 7th round pick, and a 2nd round pick.
It can be easy as a GM to get caught up in the moment when you have a winning team by giving up everything that you have when you know you can win now, but the Lightning can't win now, or in the future, now that all of their assets are gone and that they let everyone go. They've also let go some very valuable members of their Cup team that they haven't been able to replace every year, as Blake Coleman left in 2021, Ondrej Palat left in 2022, Alex Killorn in 2023, and worst of all, they let Steven Stamkos leave this summer. No man has done more for the franchise than he has, and Julien BriseBois lowballed him this offseason by offering him 3 million $, after he put up an 81 point season for the team. In the summer of 2016 it was rumored that he would leave for Buffalo or Toronto, but on opening day in free agency, he signed for 8 million $, which was far less than they offered him elsewhere. He wanted them to maintain his salary, because every year he either played up to his salary or outplayed it. He's the same captain who brought them to 3 straight Stanley Cup Finals, and I was sure that at 8 million $ that was still less than what he could've asked for. BriseBois defended his offer, saying it was in the team's best interest to look at options to help them win by giving him a salary like that. But it was offensive for him as a representative of the team Stamkos cared about for so long to discard him like he was useless, and to then say those things to the media to defend his terrible decision. And for what's in Tampa Bay's "best interest to win" they need to fire BriseBois, because he has strip-mined their future while driving away the present, and if not for him, Tampa Bay could still be a Cup contender.
I don't see goaltending holding up well for the Lightning, because Vasilevskiy is past his best days, but Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point should be able to drag them to the final spot in the East. I think the Lightning will finish 43-26-13, 4th in the Atlantic Division, 8th in the Eastern Conference, and 15th in the league, and they will lose in Round 1 in 5 games.
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