Just over the halfway point of the season the Tampa Bay Lightning are sitting at 51 points, good for third in the Eastern Conference, a vast improvement over the past several years (as the St. Louis Blues in the Western Conference). With 123 goals for and 112 goals against, this team is performing the way that it had been expected the past few years, but in those past year the actual performance didn’t meet the expectations. The young players on the team, are the ones leading the team in scoring with Klim Kostin leading with 17 goals and Bowen Byram leading with 23 assists. Alex Nedeljkovic has 15 wins in 33 games, 2.62 goals against and a 91.2 save percentage.
While this is as really good first half of the season, this team needs to keep this level of play going to make the playoffs for the first time in several years. The question that remains is, will the Lightning GM, Dave Semyck, make a move or two before the deadline to solidify the roster? While the Lightning have 51 points, the spread between goals for and goals against isn’t much, can the Lightning add some scoring punch? Would they prefer to add something to the defensive group to solidify the back end?
With no picks in the next draft, are the Lightning willing to part with some of the young players on the farm in order to add pieces for a playoff push? Tampa picked four players in the first round of the last draft, will one or more of those players be used as trade pieces in future moves? It is going to be an interesting lead up to the trade deadline for sure.
12/27/2022 - 287 words
