Tampa Bay Lightning Players Who Could Be Moved At The Trade Deadline

Chase Kimball – Bolts By The Bay Contributor

As much as I hate to say it, I think Ben Bishop won’t be playing with the Tampa Bay Lightning past the trade deadline.  Plain and simple, the Lightning don’t have the cap space to give Bishop the money he’ll want as one of the top goalies in the league.  

Not only this but with the expansion draft coming up the Lightning can only protect one goalie.  This means that if the Lightning choose to protect Ben Bishop, they will almost certainly lose Andrei Vasilevskiy.  

There’s an eight-year difference between the two and in my opinion, while Vasilevskiy isn’t quite on Bishop’s level yet, he would do just fine as the Lightning’s main netminder.  He’s the future of the Lightning and in my personal opinion, with time and training, I think he can become a franchise goalie.  

Tampa Bay Lightning

No matter what happens after the deadline, there aren’t any good possibilities that come from keeping him.  If the Lightning choose to protect Vasy in the expansion draft and Bishop is selected, the Bolts just lost one of the better goalies in the NHL right now for nothing.  

As he will be an Unrestricted Free Agent at the end of this season, it’s possible that he won’t be selected by the Las Vegas Golden Knights.  They wouldn’t want to waste the pick on someone they can’t reach a deal with so the Lightning may still have both goalies.  

As mentioned earlier, there won’t be enough money to resign him so he’ll go where the money is and the Lightning will still lose him for nothing.  

Trading Bishop before the deadline would ensure that the Lightning at least receives some kind of asset from losing him and will also free up some much-needed cap space that can be put towards signing players like Tyler Johnson and Jonathan Drouin whose contracts will also expire next season.