It's no secret that Brayden Point had a season to forget for the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2025-26. Few forwards have been as automatic and consistent as the former 79th-overall selection, but things just never really came together for the pivot this season.
Point didn't have the chance to get settled in as the year wore on, missing a total of 19 games. Don't forget that an injury suffered in mid-January cost him a spot on Team Canada in the Olympics, either. He never came right out and said that not being able to go to the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics got to him, but missing out on the opportunity to wear the Maple Leaf couldn't have been easy.
All of this culminated in a campaign to forget, as Point failed to score 40 goals in a year for the first time since 2021-22. It doesn't sound like he'll be resting on his laurels this summer, hoping that some time away from the game will recharge his batteries. Instead, he sounds very aware that he may need to change his approach as the game shifts around him and he gets older.
"I've definitely learned some things in my game that I need to get better at... this summer's gonna be a great opportunity for me to work on those things that I identified,” Point said, according to Benjamin Pierce of the Lightning's offcial website.
"Sometimes the way you played in the past doesn't always work when you get older, and the game kind of changes, so now it's about just putting in the work so you can produce at a level that is going to help the team win."
NHL players are big fans of non-answers, generally refusing to get into specifics about offseason plans. Hearing Point have this level of self-awareness is refreshing in a way. Fans usually assume that the players they follow are going to go home and work their tales off, but it's something else to hear them talk, even briefly, about the game catching up to them in some way.
Point has a solution, however. According to Pierce, the 30-year-old plans to work on his shooting, particularly in close, where more and more goals are being scored at the NHL level. Defenders have become so effective at shutting down the "home plate" area in front of their net, that this evolution (of sorts) makes sense for one of the best scorers in the league.
A lot of things didn't go right for the Lightning last year, and they still have a 106-point season that ended with several of their top players (and their coach) getting nominated for individual trophies. And, to a man, it sounds like no one in Tampa is OK with how the campaign ended. That might not be the best news for an Eastern Conference that saw a lot of new blood emerge in 2025-26.
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