How Can the Lightning Find the Needed Cap Space to Re-Sign Nikita Kucherov?

Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman has rightly received accolades for his adroit handling of the team’s roster this summer. Longtime franchise cornerstone Steven Stamkos could have been lost to free agency, but the Bolts got him under contract in the nick of time. Victor Hedman, the defenceman who is arguably even more important to the club than Stamkos, was extended with a year to spare.

Yzerman, however, faces a third test before the start of the 2016-17 NHL season. He still has to sign Nikita Kucherov.

Kucherov, who is younger and less famous than Stamkos or Hedman, is also vital to the Lightning. He scored 30 goals last season and led the club in scoring with 66 points.

Kucherov stepped up in the playoffs, too, leading the team in goals (11) and points (19). Jonathan Drouin’s compelling story got much of the media focus, but Kucherov was the offensive leader during the club’s improbable postseason. The Lightning won two rounds and took eventual champion Pittsburgh to seven games, despite not having Stamkos, No. 2 defenceman Anton Stralman or starting goalie Ben Bishop for long stretches.

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How much will Kucherov cost? Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times last week suggested Filip Forsberg as a good point of comparison, noting that the Predators forward had signed a six-year, $36 million contract with Nashville.

Kucherov is a year older than Forsberg, but the scoring numbers make it plain that it’s a good comparison:

• Forsberg, last two seasons: 164 games played, 59 goals, 68 assists, 127 points
• Kucherov, last two seasons: 159 games played, 59 goals, 72 assists, 131 points

Forsberg money would be a tight squeeze for the Lightning. According to General Fanager, the team has approximately $6.6 million in available cap space for a barebones roster of 12 forwards, six defencemen and two goaltenders. The Bolts still need to re-sign both Kucherov and fellow restricted free agent Nikita Nesterov, and they would also likely carry another forward (probably at a league-minimum salary of $575,000).

Yzerman admitted to Smith that at some point, the team would need to make a move to make the dollars work:

"

We've got to be under the cap at some point. Depending on the health of players, Ryan Callahan had surgery and if he's not ready to start the season, that buys us some time. We can do that (long-term injured reserve) if we need to. At some point, we're going to have to be cap compliant to start the season, there's no way around it.

"

The team has a few options at its disposal, ranging widely in terms of both impact and probability.

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Trade Ben Bishop. Andrei Vasilevskiy stepped in brilliantly in the postseason. Moving the pricey Bishop—a pending free agent who would be difficult to protect in the expansion draft anyway—could certainly clear money off the books. The problem is that the Lightning can contend for the Cup right now, and moving Bishop could hurt their chances.

Trade an expensive defenceman. Jason Garrison and Braydon Coburn both have multiple seasons left on their current contracts. They both are in their early 30s and may safely be regarded as at least somewhat dispensable. The trouble is that there are still comparable options in free agency (Kris Russell, Kyle Quincey), and teams are not going to be eager to either take on a multiyear commitment or help out the Bolts.

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Trade an expensive forward. Valtteri Filppula is the obvious candidate here, though Callahan’s inclusion on the U.S. World Cup team indicates he still has some cachet around the NHL. The problem here is the same as with Garrison and Coburn: multiyear commitments to older players while much cheaper free-agent options exist. Alex Killorn might be an option, but he is presumably seen as a core player.

Trade one or more cheaper forwards. Players like Brian Boyle, J.T. Brown and Erik Condra are all on short seven-figure deals, and Tampa Bay could take a page out of the Chicago Blackhawks playbook and attempt to replace them on the cheap.  

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Trade Andrej Sustr. Sustr is a big, relatively young right-shot defenceman making a modest $1.45 million. The Lightning could plausibly replace him either internally or with a bargain-basement free agent and shave some money off the payroll.  

With a deft touch, Tampa Bay’s situation is navigable, and so far the club’s management has shown itself capable of the kind of masterful maneuvering required here. Yzerman’s preferred route would be to move one of his highly paid older players, thereby creating space both this year and in the future. That would be a major coup, but it may not be possible.

Assuming such a trade is not to be, there would appear to be two options. The first is careful nickel-and-dime trimming, with Sustr the likeliest name to be on the move. The other is a bold deal involving Bishop, a trade that would hurt the Lightning at least somewhat in the here-and-now but is perhaps defensible from an asset management perspective.

Given how close Tampa Bay is to winning it all, and the management’s obvious willingness to take chances (as it did with Stamkos) to win in the short term, smaller moves to insure cap compliance seem the most probable course.

Statistics courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.