![]() Now he’s got two Cup rings as the Lightning’s director of player personnel. Īt the time I was only referring to the work he put in helping Tampa Bay’s prospects to grow and learn the professional game. The Lightning will be reaping the rewards of this man’s tireless work for years to come. After years as an invaluable leader on the ice for the Crunch and in the community, Côté headed for Europe in 2015, and I had this to say: Hockey operations and player personnel guys, one of whom, J.P. The GM, Julien Briseboise, who guided the Crunch before Yzerman left to run the Detroit Red Wings. ![]() His assistants, including Rob Zettler, who was formerly a head coach for the Crunch. Syracuse alumni also make up the front office: the head coach, Jon Cooper, who is now sporting an unbelievable. Syracuse alumni make up most of the major star talent on the Tampa Bay Lightning roster, save the two top picks that were on the team in the pre-Steve Yzerman era. He has done this most recently with Colton (4th round, 2016), Anthony Cirelli (3rd round, 2015) and Mathieu Joseph (4th round, 2015) - to make no mention of Boris Katchouk and Taylor Raddysh (both 2nd round picks in 2016) waiting in the wings with the Syracuse Crunch.īut let’s do mention the Crunch and why that team and its coaching staff are so invaluable to what the Lightning have built: This puts more pressure on Murray to land good players that can contribute outside the first round. Rather than using first-round picks to snag a project player and waiting three to five years to see if they’ll ever suit up for meaningful NHL minutes, the organizational strategy has shifted towards first-round picks being more valuable in trade fodder for adding experienced, established NHL depth right now. In the past five seasons or so, the team has regularly drafted towards the bottom half of the first round. Murray probably deserves more public recognition for the role he’s had in shaping this organization over the past decade. The Tampa Bay Lightning actually have those things.īuilding this team starts with the amateur scouting department headed by Al Murray. Any team can claim to have an outstanding scouting department, AHL team, and development structure, plus the acumen to target players in trades that return value. ![]() Even if you believe that Kucherov unfairly being on LTIR allowed them to add and keep the right pieces to win another Cup, they still had to identify those pieces in the first place. Again, set aside the dollars and cents for a moment, and the cap controversy, and just admire what this organization has built. They have stars, *and* they’re insanely deepīut they’re $18 mil- I hear you. I also feel compelled to point out that by 5v5 ice time, Steven Stamkos is a 3rd liner on this Lightning team. I mean, by ice time, captain Steven Stamkos was a depth player: The line between “stars” and “depth” blurred to the point of non-existence. A shade over $9 million in cap space taken up between the five of them, more than half of it going to Johnson who was on waivers twice this year. Make no mistake, this piece is to boast about the Tampa Bay Lightning’s deep, solid organization.Ĭonsider the players who scored the last six goals in the Final against the Montreal Canadiens: Ross Colton. Instead of discussing the players the Tampa Bay Lightning should have lost to their cap crunch from last offseason, and whether or not they circumvented the cap, and whether even if they did it’s not really fair to whine about it because they wanted this loophole closed after losing in the Final to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2015 - let’s talk about the impact depth players had on this team that just won back-to-back Stanley Cups.
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