The Tampa Bay Lightning understand the price of success

Steven Ellis
Steven Ellis
The Tampa Bay Lightning understand the price of success
Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

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You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t be a competitive NHL team and have a loaded prospect pool. Some teams come close – the Carolina Hurricanes, for example. But there’s a reason why teams like Boston, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Colorado have very underwhelming prospect crops. They’re focused on the present, and they’ll deal with the future later.

And no team understands that better than the Tampa Bay Lightning. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Final three years in a row, winning twice in 2020 and 2021. They built that team through incredible drafting. But once they found their competitive groove, the future didn’t matter. The team moved prospects and draft assets to get them the pieces they needed – no matter the role.

That’s why the Bolts are one of the most successful teams of the salary cap era. And they’re not done.

After watching Toronto (Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari), Boston (Dmitry Orlov and Garnet Hathaway) and the New York Rangers (Vladimir Tarasenko and, likely, Patrick Kane) make some massive news, the Lightning took a more muted, but vital, approach to the trade market. Muted in terms of the player name, perhaps, because that deal was one whopper of a Sunday swap.

The Lightning acquired Tanner Jeannot from the Nashville Predators for defenseman Cal Foote, a 2023 third-round pick, a 2023 fourth-round pick, a 2023 fifth-round pick, a 2024 second-round pick and a 2025 first-round pick (top-10 protected).

With that, the Lightning don’t have a first-round pick for the next three years, just three picks in 2023 and eight over the next two seasons. That’s the price to pay for players like Brandon Hagel and now Jeannot – three players that would have likely gone for a much lower price had it been any other GM calling. Before that, depth forwards Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow cost the team first-rounders, too.

But it’s moves like that that have made GM Julien BriseBois so successful. Call it the price of success.

On a lesser scale, there’s Nick Paul, whom the Lightning acquired for Mathieu Joseph and a fourth-round pick last year. His heroics in Game 7 of Tampa’s opening-round series against Toronto last year helped finalize a comeback effort that saw the Bolts on the brink of elimination just a few nights earlier. That alone was worth the price, but then Paul turned out to be quite the useful bottom-six energizer with good size and the occasional moment of offensive brilliance. Now, he’s on pace for 40 points for the first time in his career.

There’s Hagel, who, after a solid 21-goal, 37-point run with the Hawks last year, was acquired in a deal that sent two first-rounders to Chicago as the main course. Hagel had a quiet playoff run, but the slow burn was worth it – he’s on pace for a nice 30 goals and 69 points this season. The Lightning saw the potential, paid the price, and now he’s one of the best-value players in the league.

So, it seems like BriseBois is tempting fate again with Jeannot. He’s throwing it all on the line.

Tampa Bay is all in. And they have to be after seeing what the rest of the Eastern Conference is doing. The Western Conference might have the more interesting fight leading up to the playoffs, but there isn’t a team in the top echelon in the East that I’d want to deal with. The rich keep getting richer. And with just a couple days left until Friday’s deadline, the fun isn’t stopping anytime soon.

Had Tampa made the move a week ago, who knows how different the price would have been? But BriseBois typically doesn’t get fleeced in deals like this. Obviously, it’s a lot for a 25-year-old winger with five goals and 85 penalty minutes. But with a bit more context, he had 24 goals and 41 points as a rookie with the Predators last year. He played far beyond what he’d do on a team like Tampa Bay, but you don’t outscore Trevor Zegras, Lucas Raymond, Cole Caufield, Anton Lundell, Dawson Mercer and Seth Jarvis by accident. Jeannot is more than capable of producing.

But, yes, his physicality is definitely what the Bolts wanted him for. He has a solid 6-foot-2, 208-pound frame and knows how to use it. He’s fourth in the NHL in hits and fifth in penalty minutes – teams notice him. And he has that knack for the net that, in a good situation like in Tampa Bay, he might be able to unlock again. Every contender could use a player like Jeannot, and there wasn’t a better bottom-six physical, scoring winger on the market. Tampa Bay got him and instantly upgraded its depth. That’s the Tampa Bay way.

It might not be as big of a splash as some of the other contenders made, but Tampa didn’t need a big-name acquisition – this is exactly the type of player that makes them tougher to play against. That’s exactly what the Bolts needed to do.

At this point, watch him score 25 goals next year after the Lightning sign him to a cheap, long-term deal over the summer. You know it’s going to happen.

If you want to compete with the best, you’ve got to do whatever it takes. There’s no such thing as status quo here. Yeah, Jeannot’s cost was high. But Tampa Bay doesn’t give a you-know-what about holding on to their picks. Their ability to draft in any round has made them so dangerous.

With most of the team’s core signed until 2027 – and beyond – the Lightning aren’t going anywhere. They’ve got their stars – Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Mikhail Sergachev, Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov – they’ve got the difference-makers – Anthony Cirelli, Paul and Erik Cernak – and they’ve got an elite goaltender in Andrei Vasilevskiy. A couple of late first-round draft picks weren’t going to make a big difference.

When you know how to utilize your assets like BriseBois, you’re given the benefit of the doubt. It’ll all come crumbling down one day, but that’s far, far away.

It’s hard to feel bad for Tampa’s scouting group, either. They already have a few Cup rings, and now they can spend more time in the Florida sun. It’s not like they’re going to be that busy over the next few years.

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