Tampa Bay Lightning Year In Review: Andrej Sustr

As the Tampa Bay Lightning prepare to embark on the 2016-17 season, let’s take a closer look at the 2015-16 season of Lightning defenseman Andrej Sustr.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have had an incredibly turbulent off-season. The off-season started with Lightning fans on the edge of their seats waiting for the team to re-sign Lightning captain Steven Stamkos. Once that was accomplished, pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place like clockwork.

There are still some players in need of new contracts for the 2016-17 season, like the Lightning’s 2015-16 leading point scorer, Nikita Kucherov. With less than two months until the start of the new season, fans in the Tampa Bay area are starting to worry about the future of everyone’s favorite Russian sniper. Only time will tell how this storyline will play out.

On the bright side, the off-season is about to become a thing of the past. After we put a big X over today’s date on the calendar, we now have just 54 days until the start of the upcoming 2016-17 season. There are many exciting things ahead for the Tampa Bay Lightning, but before we turn our attention to the new season for good, let’s take a closer look at the 2015-16 season had by Lightning defenseman Andrej Sustr.

Tampa Bay Lightning

As many Tampa Bay Lightning fans already know, Andrej Sustr is one of those players who have started in the Lightning’s developmental system with the Syracuse Crunch and fought their way up for a more permanent spot on the main roster.

Like many great players before him, Sustr went undrafted. On March 21, 2013 the Tampa Bay Lightning came to terms with Andrej Sustr on a two-year, entry-level contract. Just two days later, he found himself on the ice with the Tampa Bay Lightning as they took on the New Jersey Devils, a game in which the Lightning won 5-4 in the shootout.

Until the 2014-15 season, Sustr would split his time between the Lightning’s main roster and the Lightning’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch. It was that season Sustr would set a career offensive high for himself, scoring 13 assists in the 72 games with the Bolts.

Unfortunately, given his sheer size and reach, Lightning fans expected a bit more from the young defenseman. He seemed to struggle to make the hard hits and wasn’t always the quickest defenseman to the play. Thankfully, as time pressed on, Sustr seemed to slowly find his groove.

Now, allow us to fast forward a little to the 2015-16 season. As we just mentioned, Andrej Sustr has made some decent improvements over the course of the last few seasons. He has been more aggressive with the puck, has been making bigger hits, and has even upped his performance on the scoresheet.

Last season, Sustr played in 77 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning. In that amount of time, he was able to score four goals and 17 assists for a career-high 21 points.

Despite some of his improvements, Sustr still has some work to do before he can be considered alongside players like Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman. In terms of blocked shots, among Lightning defensemen that played at least half of the season, Sustr came in sixth place with 66 blocked shots. Sustr fell one position in terms of hits, coming in seventh place with 29 hits, which averages out to about .4 hits per game.

At just 25 years of age, Sustr still has plenty of time to grow. Unfortunately, at the rate the Tampa Bay Lightning are improving, if the upswing doesn’t happen soon, the young, Czech defenseman may be looking for another team when his contract expires at the end of the 2016-17 season and he becomes a Restricted Free Agent.

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It will certainly be interesting to see how things play out for Andrej Sustr in the coming season. The Tampa Bay Lightning blueline is being shaken up a bit this season, and there are going to be plenty of defensemen looking for increased ice time. As the old saying goes, to the winner goes the spoils. The puck is now on his stick.

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