Tampa Bay Lightning Need Depth
Anthony Di Marco of The Daily Faceoff joined TSN Radio in Montreal on Monday and was asked about what the needs are for the Tampa Bay Lightning at the trade deadline.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Host: Just wondering. You’re looking at this Tampa Bay squad, Anthony. Missing (Victor) Hedman for a while. Missing (Andrei) Vasilevskiy for a while. They miss (Brayden) Point for a while. Now, (Anthony) Cirelli) steps out. Like, Jon Cooper’s done some great work here, and they’re not a young squad either. Like, do you expect them to be active between now and the deadline? Just try to figure out somewhere else they may be able to get a little bit of help from.
Anthony Di Marco: “Yeah, I would imagine. So, Julien BriseBois squad, he always seems to be active. I believe it was last year when he makes the trade with the Seattle Kraken to bring back Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand. And now looking at that team right now, you obviously have some injuries with Brayden Point, and as you mentioned, Anthony Cirelli.
And I think like maybe just adding, like, some depth to that lineup, maybe like a depth centerman, so you could perhaps shift Nick Paul to the wing, higher up the lineup. I just think a centerman in general. But hey, the entire league you need centermen these days.
And then even, like maybe a defenseman on the back end, you can never use too many depth defense. But then if youlook historically at some of the players that the Lightning brought in and had their Cup wins with. I mean, David Savard or Zach Bogosian or what have you. I think that’d be right up Julien BriseBois alley.
NHLRumors.com Note: In speaking with several people during the Stadium Series, the belief is that the Tampa Bay Lightning want to go after a centerman who can win faceoffs and has offensive punch. Now, they could go down the route of just getting a faceoff guy similar to what the Pittsburgh Penguins had with Matt Cullen, but the Lightning would prefer to get a player with some offensive upside. As BriseBois told Sirius XM NHL Network Radio on the weekend, he wants to do something that helps the team now and for the future.
Artemi Panarin and the Tampa Bay Lightning
Later during the same segment on TSN Radio in Montreal, Anthony Di Marco of Daily Faceoff was asked about Artemi Panarin and where he could go be traded to and mentions the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Di Marco: ‘We talked about the Tampa Bay Lightning. Like that would, that is the exact type of team that you could see, in my opinion, Artemi Panarin trying to angle his way to go to. Like the first thought would come to my mind were the Florida Panthers, but like, I just feel like Tampa is more in a position, like organizationally, and maybe even asset-wise, to kind of make that move. And I just think they need an Artemi Panarin probably more than any team at the top of the standings across the NHL.”
As we have seen now, this is the second or third time the Lightning have been mentioned or thought about. We have seen the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning make trades before. Cam Robinson threw out the idea as well and broke down what the trade would look like.
Just pulling on a loose strand, but I wonder if Tampa is the quiet frontrunner for Panarin.
Bjorkstrand’s $5.4M going back, a 2028 1st, a couple of 2nds, maybe a guy like Goncalves.. the framework is there.
Sunshine State. Playoff bound. Russian stars. They check all the boxes.
— Cam Robinson (@Hockey_Robinson) February 3, 2026
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