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Recapping trade deadline day and what it all means

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by Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
March 1, 2017


TAMPA, Fla. – Steve Yzerman arrived in the Lightning work room just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday with the look of exhaustion after completing a complicated task.

After an energy-draining four-days of action leading up to the NHL trade deadline, Yzerman felt the job at hand turned out as planned to alleviate some of the team’s salary cap concerns after this season.

As the trade deadline passed on Wednesday, Yzerman finished things off by sending veteran center Valtteri Filppula along with a fourth round pick and a conditional seventh round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for defenseman Mark Streit. The Flyers retain 4.7 percent of Streit’s contract.

Yzerman then sent Streit to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a fourth-round pick while Tampa Bay retains 50 percent of Streit’s contract for the rest of this season.

Tampa Bay also sent minor league goaltender Adam Wilcox to the Florida Panthers for veteran goaltender Mike McKenna.

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It capped off a busy four days for Yzerman, who traded goaltender Ben Bishop to the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday and veteran forward Brian Boyle to Toronto on Monday.

With Tampa Bay on the outside of the playoff picture, Yzerman was intent on making the difficult choice to trade three key members that were at the center of the team’s success the past two seasons in order to help protect the team’s future.

In the three main deals, Yzerman netted a second and seventh round pick, a conditional pick that could be as high as a second-round pick along with veteran goaltender Peter Budaj and prospect Erik Cernak. Tampa Bay also helped Syracuse in its run to the playoffs, acquiring Byron Froese in the deal with Toronto along with McKenna, who spent time with the Lightning during the 2008-09 season.

But the biggest gain for the Lightning proved to be space. Salary cap space and a protection spot for the expansion draft this summer.

That came directly by moving Filppula, who has one year left on his contract at $5 million. Filppula also has a no move clause in his deal (he had a modified no-trade clause) that would have required Tampa Bay to use one of its available protected roster spots for this summer’s expansion draft.

”These particular moves had to be made at some point and our record dictated that we had to make them now,” Yzerman said. “If I do nothing, I probably lose a player off the roster that I prefer not to.”

In addition, with Jonathan Drouin, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, Andrej Sustr, Jake Dotchin and Slater Koekkoek all restricted free agents this summer, Tampa Bay now has approximately $18.8 million in available cap space for next season.

Yzerman said the priority is to try get the RFA players signed to new deals by next season.

”We’re in a position to be better off in the future,” Yzerman said. “We are better off cap wise, but we’ve got to make good decisions to improve our team.’’

Though it may not offer a lot of flexibility – unless more cap-alleviating moves are made over the summer – it opens up a window that otherwise would have been difficult to get everybody in under the cap constraints. With the extensions signed by Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy kicking in next year, being able to lock all the restricted free agents in to new deals next season while keeping the cap under the ceiling would have been a challenge not likely to be met.

Now, those odds are better, even with Palat and Johnson holding arbitration rights as both figure to get a significant boost on their current $3.3 million per year contract.

Had Tampa Bay been in a different situation in the standings this season, Yzerman said he may have went in to the trade deadline with a different approach. But as the team has sat outside the playoff picture for most of the season and the odds against the Lightning, the standings dictated his actions.

”For me the preference was to do things that would help us this year, next year and beyond,” Yzerman said. “I had to make decisions based on our record.’’

Completing the task he set out to do was not simple. In what was one of the slowest trade deadline deals with just 18 trades consummated involving 33 players, Yzerman may have made the biggest move of the day.

”For the first few years the cap was growing each year, for the last couple of years the cap hasn’t grown at the same rate as it did in the past,’’ Yzerman said. “It’s made it tricky. A lot of teams are at or close to the cap. I think the expansion draft has had an impact on what teams wanted to do. It’s just getting more and more difficult to make a trade. And I found out the deadline that teams aren’t as willing to give up draft picks and they are being much more conservative.’’

Making the job Yzerman pulled off that much more impressive.

Noteables: After RW Gabriel Dumont cleared waivers on Wednesday, he – along with D Jake Dotchin and RW Adam Erne were assigned to the Syracuse Crunch in a paper transaction that allowed them to be eligible for the American Hockey League playoffs. … Yzerman said they considered making rookie C Brayden Point eligible for Syracuse in the postseason as well, but felt he has proven an NHL player all season so they chose not to make that move. … Yzerman did not rule out revisiting the cap situation this summer in the attempt to create more cap space if needed.
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