Complete Preview for the Tampa Bay Lightning's 2014-15 Season

The Tampa Bay Lightning had the biggest turnaround of any Eastern Conference team a season ago. After a 28th-place, 40-point 2013 season, the Lightning surged to 101 points, eighth-most in the league, in 2013-14.

Taking the 2013 points total and projecting it over 82 games, that's about a 25-point improvement last season.

The scary part for the rest of the East is after this offseason, the potential is there for the Lightning to make another leap in 2014-15.

What We Learned in 2013-14

First and foremost, we learned Jon Cooper might be the best coach in the NHL. Patrick Roy took home the Jack Adams Award, as the Colorado Avalanche engineered a bigger turnaround and really, Roy is a household name and Cooper sounds like a guy from whom you'd buy insurance. Most NHL awards are a popularity contest, and Roy is the captain of the high school football team running for class president.

But while Roy and Avs were using smoke, mirrors and Semyon Varlamov to excel in the face of a horrible Corsi and Fenwick, Cooper had his Lightning in the top half of the league in possession numbers. And Cooper guided the Lightning back to the postseason with a young roster and without one of the best players in the world for three months.

Ondrej Palat and Tyler Johnson, two forwards who played for Cooper on his dominant AHL squads, had outstanding rookie campaigns. Palat, a seventh-round pick in 2011, had 23 goals and 59 points in 81 games while Johnson, who went undrafted, had 24 goals and 50 points in 82 games.

Palat and Johnson finished second and third, respectively, behind Nathan MacKinnon of the Avs in Calder Trophy voting.

Valtteri Filppula, the team's big-ticket signing two summers ago, delivered 25 goals and 58 points. He was one of eight Lightning to score at least 10 goals. The Lightning were ninth in the league and third in the conference in scoring and remarkably pulled it off mostly without Steven Stamkos.

On Nov. 11, Stamkos crashed into a net in Boston and broke his leg. It resulted in the Lightning playing more than half the season without the game's best goal scorer, yet it did nothing to phase them. They reached the playoffs with 101 points but were submarined in the first round by the Montreal Canadiens in large part because goaltender Ben Bishop was out with an injured hand.

But Bishop was terrific in his first full season as a starter, posting a 2.23/.924 split in 63 games. 

Victor Hedman also began to realize his first-round potential, as he had career bests in goals (13) and points (55) while leading the team in minutes (22:26). 

It was an exciting, promising first full season in Tampa under Cooper that ended somewhat disappointingly in the postseason. But with the moves made by general manager Steve Yzerman during the offseason, an even better season in 2014-15 could be on deck.

Outlook for 2014-15

This is what a 101-point team did this summer in an attempt to get better.

• The only player of note to leave was Teddy Purcell, as he was part of a trade that landed him with the Arizona Coyotes. Ryan Malone wasn't brought back after his cocaine arrest, but his five goals in 57 games will hardly be missed.

Left defense	Right defense	Goaltenders
Victor Hedman	Anton Stralman	Ben Bishop
Matt Carle	Eric Brewer	Evgeni Nabokov
Jason Garrison	Radko Gudas
Mark Barberio, Andrej Sustr

• The defense was solidified with the acquisition of Jason Garrison from the Canucks and the signing of Anton Stralman to a five-year deal. Sami Salo was allowed to walk away as a free agent to make room for the duo. 

Left wing	Center	Right wing
Jonathan Drouin	Steven Stamkos	Ryan Callahan
Alex Killorn	Valtteri Filppula	Ondrej Palat
J.T. Brown	Tyler Johnson	Nikita Kucherov
Brenden Morrow	Brian Boyle	Brett Connolly
Richard Panik, Vladislav Namestnikov

• With their top six forwards in good shape, the Lightning added Brian Boyle and Brenden Morrow to bolster the bottom six. Boyle should also help the the Lightning penalty kill, as it finished 23rd in the league a season ago.

• With Anders Lindback flopping in the playoffs and struggling in general, the Lightning signed Evgeni Nabokov to serve as Bishop's backup. The 39-year-old isn't what he once was, but his .905 save percentage last season was 14 points better than what Lindback posted on a far better squad.

• It's not an offseason "move," but the Lightning will welcome 2013 first-round pick Jonathan Drouin to the lineup this season. The 19-year-old is among the favorites to win the Calder Trophy after spending an extra year with the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL, where he had 29 goals and 108 points in 46 games.

The one change that occurred last season that could affect this season is the trade of Martin St. Louis for Ryan Callahan. St. Louis is an elite scorer and borderline Hall of Fame player while Callahan is merely a second- or third-line talent. Eighty-two games without St. Louis could be an issue for the team's offense and power play.

Whatever holes a 101-point squad could have, Yzerman did everything he could to plug them this summer.

Throw in the fact that the East as a whole lost more talent during the offseason than it gained, and the Lightning are poised to run roughshod over the conference in the regular season.

A playoff berth is a lock, but how far the Lightning can go in the postseason is in doubt.

Bishop has played in the same amount of postseason contests as Betty White and any Care Bear you can name. It's not out of the question for a goaltender to win a Stanley Cup in his first playoff trip—Cam Ward and Antti Niemi did it in the past eight years—but experience in those games would be preferable.

The Lightning have the talent to emerge from the East and have a shot against the best in the West. 

All statistics via NHL.com or war-on-ice.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.