The Lightning were limited in what they could do and didn’t worry what others were doing
Chris Krenn: Tampa Bay Lightning GM Julien BriseBois when asked if the action league-wide leading up to and at the deadline had any impact on his trade deadline strategy.
“Each team has their own set of cards that they need to play and that they can play. We’re trying to assemble the best team possible with those cards. We knew going in what our cap space was. We knew going in what our draft capital was. We knew what our roster makeup was and areas where we thought we could help the group be a harder team to eliminate come playoff time.
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Tanner Jeannot was the player that we had targeted as being the best fit for us to help us win, not only this year but into the future. Once we were able to secure his rights, we turned out attention to (Mikey) Eyssimont as a player who we thought was a good fit for us considering the cap hit. He’s going to be an unrestricted free agent after the season, but hopefully he’s someone that we can keep after we’ve gotten to know him a little bit better and he’s gotten to know us. We saw value in adding him to our group, again, hopefully for not only this year, but in the future as well.
We’re focused on our team. We’re trying to build the best iteration possible of our team and I’m assuming my counter parts are trying to do the same thing with their respective clubs.
The St. Louis Blues process will take a couple of years
Matthew DeFrank: St. Louis Blues GM Doug Armstrong on acquiring the short-term contracts of Kasperi Kapanen, Sammy Blais and Jakub Vrana and they fit into their overall timeline.
“We understand that there’s a process that you have to go through when you want to – it’s not a rebuild, retool, I’m not sure. I know what we’re doing. It’s not something that happens over one summer. It happens over a couple of years, but you want to continue to build a foundation and these players are going to help us build that foundation as wel wait on (Jimmy) Snuggerud, as we wait on (Zachary) Bolduc, as we wait on Jake Neighbours to grab a bigger part of our team.
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Dean, some of these picks that we have this year, whether we use those picks, whether we acquire NHL caliber players now, it does open it up, We’re not in the spot where we’ve been over a number of July 1sts where we’re looking to add one or two big-time pieces that are going to flip the needle from good to great.”
