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Lightning Ink Point to Long-Term Extension, Sign Multiple Depth Pieces

July 28, 2021, 7:34 PM ET [42 Comments]
Michael Stuart
Tampa Bay Lightning Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Tampa Bay Lightning kicked off the start of Free Agent Frenzy with an absolute bang today. Julien BriseBois was a busy General Manager, filling holes on his roster and inking a core piece to a long-term pact. What’s now obvious as the day comes to an end is that BriseBois had a clear plan of where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do; he delivered on all fronts.

After moving Tyler Johnson’s cap hit in a trade last night, BriseBois had a few areas to address in his lineup as free agency opened. Almost everyone who follows the Bolts saw the need for depth defence on the right side, a bottom-six forward, and a back-up goaltender. With virtually no coin to play with, the Lightning GM still somehow managed to take care of business on all three. To summarize:

1) Zach Bogosian returns to Tampa on a three-year deal that pays him $850,000 per season. Lightning fans are intimately familiar with what Bogosian brings to the ice as a depth defender from his time with the team during the run to the 2020 Stanley Cup. He’s not a top-pairing guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he can fill minutes competently in a lower-tier role.

2) Pierre-Edouarde Bellemare joins the Lightning on a two-year pact worth $1,000,000 per season. While not as familiar to Bolts fans as Bogosian, Bellemare projects as someone who will become a similar type of fan favorite. He’s highly regarded as a defensive specialist, but has also shown that he has the capability to pot a goal or two during the course of a season.

3) Brian Elliott signed with the Bolts on a one-year deal worth $900,000. Very much in the veteran-goalie-who-can-sit-comfortably-behind-Vasilevskiy mold of Curtis McElhinney, Elliott likely won’t get too much playing time over the course of the next season. He’s a fine insurance piece and veteran presence in the room, even if his game has slipped in recent years.

The bottom line: No stupid money. No stupid term. Just a very clean bit of work to take care of clear areas of need on the first day of free agency.

As if those successes weren’t enough to call it a good day’s work for the Lightning GM, BriseBois capped the afternoon by inking Brayden Point to a long-term extension. The deal, which kicks in following this coming season, will pay Point $9.5-million annually over the next eight years. The salary ceiling set by Nikita Kucherov appears to be a real thing in Tampa.

Usually when looking at long-term, big-money deals, there’s an immediate question of whether the player is worth it. Not in this case. Point is one of the game’s brightest stars, all while being overshadowed by names like Kucherov or Vasilevskiy. Still, his impact at both ends of the ice does not go unnoticed by either the stats community or anyone who watches Tampa games with any measure of regularity. He’s a phenomenal talent.

With Point now locked up for the long-term, the core pieces for this Lightning team are now in place for the foreseeable future. Julien BriseBois has done a basically perfect job of assembling a supporting cast around his core to this point in his tenure as General Manager. He now gets the chance to keep that trend going.

As always, thanks for reading.
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