Some remaining UFAs
Sean Leahy of NBC Sports: Looking at some of the remaining free agents.
Players who will retire or sign with their ‘home’ team: Niklas Kronwall (DET), Justin Williams (CAR), Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton (SJ).
Potential PTOs: Scott Darling, Ben Lovejoy, Marc Methot, Dion Phaneuf, and Cam Ward.
UFA forwards: Brian Boyle, Derick Brassard, Patrick Maroon, Jason Pominville, and Tobias Rieder.
UFA defensemen: Jake Gardiner, and Ben Hutton.
Other notable UFAs: Andrew MacDonald, Dan Girardi, Thomas Vanek, Val Nichushkin, Riley Sheahan, Dmitrij Jaskin, Devante Smith-Pelly, Chad Johnson, Troy Brouwer, Drew Stafford, Marko Dano, Matt Read, and Zac Rinaldo.
Will the Lightning be interested in UFA defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk again?
Joe Smith of The Athletic: The Tampa Bay Lightning showed interest in defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk during the 2017 free agent period, and nearly acquired him from the St. Louis Blues at the 2016-17 trade deadline. Could the Lightning be interested in now at a low-cost deal?
Term and money are not issues for Shattenkirk right now according to sources.
If the Lightning were to bring him in on a low-cost deal, there wouldn’t be high expectations for him and he would play on their second or third pairings.
Maybe he could play on Ryan McDonagh‘s right side. There may not be any power play time for Shattenkirk unless they went with a two defenseman option on their second power play unit with Mikhail Sergachev.
Shattenkirk’s camp may reach out to the Lightning to see if there is interest. He would be a much cheaper option than trying to trade for Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen.
More cap crunch coming for the Lightning
Tampa Bay Lightning: The trading of Ryan Callahan gives the Lightning more flexibility according to GM Julien BriseBois, but they will be in another salary cap crunch next season as well.
“The reality is that I think our cap space will be even tighter a year from now. I think its best to get ahead of these issues and create some flexibility that we can use if there is an opportunity to improve our team at a later point over the course of this season.”
BriseBois believes they’ll be able to trade goaltender Loui Domingue before the start of the season.
“Hopefully something pans out this coming week here. If it’s not what we want with those organizations maybe someone else will be needing a goaltender. I’m still fairly confident that we’ll be able to find a new home for Louis come the start of the season.”
