Tampa Bay Lightning re-sign Johnson, Palat shouldn’t be far behind

The Tampa Bay Lightning re-signed forward Tyler Johnson earlier this week, but now the focus is on signing his teammate Ondrej Palat to a similar contract extension.

Going into the offseason this year, there were several possible scenarios that could have played out, and one was that Tampa Bay Lightning forward Tyler Johnson would get traded to make salary cap room for teammates Ondrej Palat and Jonathan Drouin and possibly a top 4 free-agent defenseman.

But, with Drouin gone and some reworking of the cap space by General Manager Steve Yzerman, there’s room for both Johnson and Palat. The former was re-signed Monday, and the latter has yet to be re-signed to an extension. With an arbitration hearing looming, it’s only a matter of time before Palat, a restricted free agent, gets that extension.

As of now, the Tampa Bay Lightning have around $8.55 million in cap space, per Cap Friendly, to work with, which is more than enough to fit Palat’s deal under the limit. He is expected to receive a similar contract to Johnson’s, which stands at $35 million over seven years. Because Palat has been a bit more productive over the past couple of seasons, he might receive more of a salary boost than Johnson did. The term length may be the same, though.

For Johnson’s stats this season and last, the money he will receive is warranted (though many fans hope that his production totals increase in the coming years).

As for Palat, he accumulated 52 points last season, and should receive a deal in the $5-5.5 million per season range. The Lightning have enough space to give him a deal like that with a similar term length to Johnson’s. They must be wary, though, as they’ll have to deal with important expiring contracts in the coming seasons and will need the cap space for those.

With both players inked to seven-year deals, this would give the Lightning some flexibility if they wanted to trade one of these players down the road, toward the ends of their contracts. In Johnson’s new deal, his cap hit is $5 million over those seven years, but his salary in the final two years of his contract goes as $3.75 million and $4.75 million. This is pure speculation, of course, but Johnson and Palat would both be in their early 30s at the end of their contracts if each were to get similar deals.

So, let’s take a look at how they play together on the ice and see why signing them for the same amount of time might be a good idea.

Tampa Bay Lightning

Johnson and Palat compliment each other well, and fans would likely enjoy seeing them together for the foreseeable future. Last season, while on the ice at the same time during 5v5 play, they played 424:18 minutes, scored 17 goals together, allowed 19 goals together and had an above-50 shot attempts percentage (51.6 percent), per Puckalytics. During the 2015-16 season, these WOWY (with or without you) stats were similar, just with slight differences in the data.

Going back to the 2014-15 season, which was record-breaking in several facets for the Lightning and their players, Johnson and Palat, while part of the famed “Triplets” line, played 740:46 minutes, scored 46 goals together, gave up 25 goals together, averaged 3.97 goals per 60 minutes and had an above-50 shot attempts percentage (56.8) as well. These stats don’t include teammate and then-fellow linemate Nikita Kucherov, by the way.

Though last season and 2015-16 didn’t turn out as well as 2014-15, and even the 2013-14 season when both were Calder Trophy finalists, these two players still have great potential and play well together. Essentially, the stats listed above help to paint the picture, and having them together, ideally long-term, is good for Tampa Bay. Johnson and Palat may not have been able to perform at pre-2015 levels, but the hope is that they’ll get back to those levels and produce 50-60 plus points as soon as this coming season.

Palat’s arbitration hearing will happen either in late July or early August, but with Johnson avoiding arbitration altogether, there’s a chance both sides can get a deal done before then. Other than that, there isn’t much else for the Tampa Bay Lightning front office to do in terms of signing restricted free agents, as they’ve already locked up several earlier this month.

Next: Tampa Bay Lightning sign F Tyler Johnson to a 7-Year Contract Extension

Going forward, the Tampa Bay Lightning can focus on potentially signing unrestricted free agents they’re interested in, with any available cap space, of course. It should be interesting to see what else the team does going forward as we move closer to the start of training camp in September and the regular season thereafter.