Attack
Nikita Kucherov is the leader of the Tampa attack and the best hockey player in the world right now. It was the Russian who took the prizes for the Most Valuable Player of the regular season, as well as for the Best Player in the Opinion of the League hockey players themselves. The top scorer of the last regular season scored 128 points, the best result of the NHL in 23 seasons. Kucherov is 26, and there is every reason to believe that the best years are yet to come. Any result of less than 100 points in the coming season will be regarded as a step backward.
The captain of the team and the face of the franchise - forward Steven Stamkos. The Canadian in his 29 is the best sniper of Lightning in the history of the club, on his account 393 goals. So last season, the center-forward managed to throw into the gate of the rivals more than anyone else in the team - 45 pucks. In the last 2 years, Stamkos has added a great deal to his playmaker's skills, which allowed him to score a record 98 points in his career last year's championship. The only thing you can reproach Lightning's leader is that despite all his scores, Stamkos is more likely to go into the shadows at decisive moments, such as the seventh game of the playoffs.
The third lightning striker is 23-year-old forward Braden Point. The Canadian is one of the league's main young talents. In his third season in the NHL, Point scored 41 goals and ended the year with 92 points. The 20 goals scored by the strikers in the majority are the best score in the league. Yesterday it became known that the club management agreed on a new contract with the young star. Point got a "bridge" for 3 years, similar to what was once given to Kucherov, but adjusted for the amount of money that was written out to Matthews and Marner in Toronto.
The next candidate for a breakthrough among the young Lightning attackers is 22-year-old Anthony Cirelli, who scored 19 goals in his first full season last year and made 20 assists. In general, the coach of the team John Cooper still has a lot of skillful players to attack. The vector of the direction of work of the management over the last few years has led to the fact that the bott-6 lightning several technical, talented attackers. It is this situation that will most likely prevent 22-year-old Russian Alexander Volkov, who plays for the Tampa Pharm Club, to make his way into the basis of the upcoming championship. The same difficulties in the other two main avenues of Lightning Canadians Carter Verhega and Alex Barrel-Boulet, shared the title of the best sniper AHL last season.
Tampa has a lot of technicians, but there is, for example, Cedric Packett, who became the 6th in the league in terms of hits last year, and now also a charismatic Patrick Maroon, who just took the cup with St. Louis.
Defense
The leader of the lightning defense is Swedish Victor Hedman. This time, the NHL's best defender of the previous season was only one of the top three contenders for the Norris trophy. The 28-year-old hockey player is in the season with 54 points and 12 goals. Hedman is a key player in the defense of the best team in the last regular season. The injury suffered by the defender just before the start of the playoffs clearly showed how important he is to Lightning. Although Hedman returned to the ice in the Columbus series, it was clear that Victor had not fully recovered - the result: the departure of Tampa in the first round.
Ryan McDonagh's first full season in Lightning was the most productive for the defender in 9 years of NHL career - 46 points. The 30-year-old American, who is second in the league, also has a score of +38, only less than the best defender of the season, Giordano from Calgary. In the course of the championship, McDon formed an excellent defensive pair with the NHL debut Slovak Erik Cernak, who managed to hold almost 200 forceful holds in 58 games and entered the top 10 defenders of the season on this indicator.
In the summer, the leadership decided to part with Gerardi, a veteran who had recently ended his career, and a reliable, but not younger Swede Stralman, who had agreed with Florida for an amount that Tampa could not afford because of the cap hit. At the same time, the club signed Kevin Shattenkirk, whose contract was bought by the Rangers. In the face of an American lightning received a quality attacking defender, but how he will cope with defensive functions at the beginning of the season raises some questions.
Goalkeepers
The main goalkeeper of Tampa is Andrey Vasilevsky. He has been playing in the NHL for 5 years, but the first number is the last 3 seasons. This year was the most successful year of his career for a 25-year-old hockey player. In the past championship, Vasilevsky won the most victories among NHL goalkeepers - he scored 39 wins in 53 regular matches. The current agreement ends next summer, but Lightning did not delay the signing of a new agreement with the best goalkeeper of the season. In July, a new contract with the hockey player was signed for 8 years with an annual salary of 9 and a half million. Vasilevsky's skill does not raise any questions, he is one of the top three goalkeepers in the world. At the beginning of the new agreement, Andrey will be 26, so most of it will be for the peak years for the goalkeeper. In addition, this summer the Tampa administration decided to strengthen the first goalkeeper's team with 36-year-old veteran Curtis McElhinney, who showed very decent statistics last season for Caroline.