Martin St. Louis Leaves Lightning as All-Time Franchise Points Leader

The New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning grabbed hockey headlines as Wednesday's NHL trade deadline approached by completing a deal to send Martin St. Louis to the Rangers in an exchange of team captains that landed the Lightning forward Ryan Callahan, along with a first-round draft pick and a conditional second-round selection.

With 953 points and 588 assists in 972 contests in a Lightning uniform, St. Louis leaves the Tampa Bay franchise as the all-time team leader in both of those categories.

Meanwhile, his 365 goals with the Lightning rank St. Louis second overall, 18 tallies behind Vincent Lecavalier, whose contract was bought out by the team this past summer. The two were teammates when the Lightning won their only Stanley Cup, in the 2003-04 season.

St. Louis made his NHL debut with the Calgary Flames back on Oct. 9, 1998, scoring his first 20 points in the league in 69 games over two seasons with the Flames, before signing with the Lightning as a free agent on July 31, 2000.

Having recorded 973 career points in 1,042 NHL games overall, St. Louis—who recently earned a gold medal with Team Canada at the Sochi Olympics—is currently eighth among active NHL players in scoring, and tied with Andy Bathgate for 84th all-time.

With 19 games left on the Rangers' regular season slate, the 38-year-old winger would really need to heat up in order to approach the 1,000-point mark for his career before the 2013-14 campaign concludes. St. Louis is under contract next season, though, so it's a milestone he is decidedly on track to reach eventually.