With one day remaining before the official rosters have to be submitted to the NHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning adjusted their roster by re-assigning nine players. That brings their total to 26 players remaining in training camp. They will have to reduce that number to 23 by 5:00 PM EST on Monday. Eight players were sent to Syracuse while one was loaned to his junior team. The players heading to the Crunch were:
Declan Carlile
Dylan Duke
Gage Goncalves
Max Groshev
Steven Santini
Gabriel Szturc
Matt Tomkins
Jesse Ylonen
Ethan Gauthier was returned to Drummondville, his QMJHL team.
The moves coincide with what we predicted they were going to do, well, mostly coincide with what we predicted. Three of the players listed above – Santini, Goncalves, and Ylonen – will have to clear waivers in order to be assigned to Syracuse, so there is a chance that they might lose them to another team. However, all of the other teams in the league are making similar adjustments to their roster and striving to get under the salary cap so there is a pretty good chance they will slip through the cracks.
As we mentioned above, the Lightning still have to remove three players from the roster. There are three obvious choices at this point. Jack Finley and Gabriel Fortier are going to go on injured reserve as they are out until December. Logan Brown is still listed on the training camp roster, but there are reports that he will be released from his PTO and sign an AHL deal with Syracuse.
However, the Lightning will still need to make a roster move as Puck Pedia has them $249,166 above the cap with the 23 players left when the injured players are accounted for. So we turn our attention to Conor Geekie and Max Crozier, the two rookies still in camp. One of those guys will be in Syracuse (at least on paper) before the clock strikes five on Monday.
So, which one? Honestly, it depends on the health of Luke Glendening and Mikey Eyssimont. Both were practicing on Sunday with Eyssimont rotating in on the fourth line. If they are both ready to go, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Crozier and Geekie head to Syracuse. If only one can suit up, the Lightning will probably keep just one or the other. They could keep Crozier and roll 11/7 for the first two games or keep Geekie and go with the traditional 12/6 line-up.
Or, both Geekie and Crozier could be sent down and the Lightning recall Ylonen or Goncalves. One nice thing about putting those two on waivers today is that they can get lost in the flurry of other moves being made. Then, Mr. BriseBois could recall one of them and keep them up for 30 days or 10 games played without having to expose them to waivers again. He has given himself some flexibility with the roster at this point.
One interesting note from practice today is that Geekie was taking regular reps on the third line with Cam Atkinson and Nick Paul. That’s not interesting in and of itself, but he was also getting a regular look on the second power-play unit with JJ Moser, Branden Hagel, Anthony Cirelli, and Nick Paul. Getting special teams time this late in camp might indicate that he is staying with the team.
We might be reading too much into one practice five days away from the first game. Normally that would be plenty of time to fool around with the roster, but there are some outside circumstances. Well, one big circumstance named Milton. The hurricane that is heading for Florida has already caused the cancellation of the final preseason game against Nashville on Monday. It could also lead to the Lightning canceling some of their practices as they let their players prepare for the storm.
According to their original training camp schedule, Tuesday was a scheduled off-day. That is likely to be scrambled around with Hurricane Milton scheduled to make landfall sometime on Wednesday. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Lightning head to Carolina earlier in the week than planned to avoid any post-storm travel issues. If they were to travel earlier in the week, it’s likely they would want to make sure they have the roster they plan on playing with in Carolina and not have to make any extra travel arrangements.
While the Lightning made moves on the roster, they didn’t necessarily clarify what the final roster would look like. Expect at least one or two more surprises before Friday’s game.
