TAMPA — Maybe one day the Lightning will pay for their perceived misdeeds. They’ll pay for flirting with salary cap disaster every year; they’ll pay for trading prospects and high draft picks.
But this won’t be the day. And the Lightning’s trade for forward Brandon Hagel on Friday likely won’t be the one that people point to as the beginning of the end.
Given the moves he has made the past three seasons around the trade deadline, general manager Julien BriseBois looks like he’s playing chess when others are playing checkers, and he’s doing everything he can to put a third Stanley Cup championship ring on his steady hand.
When the bar is so high — when hoisting Lord Stanley’s cup is the only true show of success — and when you’ve put yourself in a good spot for another deep postseason run, it’s easy to not think about the future.
Heading into the trade deadline, BriseBois tried his best to temper expectations that the Lightning would make a deal. Surely no one believed his bluff, because we’ve seen him downplay expectations before. And though the Lightning had roster inflexibility — and again no cap space — there was every reason to think that BriseBois could upgrade the team again.
He made the Lightning a tougher out this season by getting Hagel from the Blackhawks for two first-round draft picks and rookie forwards Boris Katchouk and Taylor Raddysh. Hagel, a 23-year-old who projects to have his best hockey ahead of him, is versatile. He can play at all three forward spots and played on both special teams units this season with Chicago. BriseBois said he has a high compete level. Where he fits in the Lightning lineup remains to be seen, but it’s a nice problem for the coaching staff to try to solve.
“They just know that they’ve added a Swiss Army knife-type player to our toolbox,” BriseBois said Friday. “I think the coaches are going to have to figure out between now and the start of the playoffs how all these players kind of come together and what is the best usage for all those forwards.”
Hagel is under contract for the next two seasons after this one at a cap-friendly $1.5 million hit a year, and after that, he can be a restricted free agent. So the Lightning can keep him under team control through 2025-26.
So though this move is about now, Hagel fits nicely with the Lightning’s young core group that includes Anthony Cirelli, Ross Colton, Erik Cernak and Mikhail Sergachev, all of whom are 25 or younger, as well as top-line center Brayden Point, who turned 26 last Sunday and is signed through the end of the decade.
“We’d like to win a championship this year, but we’d also like to win a championship next year and keep ourselves in the running,” BriseBois said. “The terms of (Hagel’s) current contract give us three really good (playoff) runs hopefully at a championship. And because of his age, we continue to control his rights for two more years or potentially five long playoff runs. So that’s a big part of the value that we see in this deal.”
The move also sends a message to everyone in the Lightning’s locker room, especially the veteran core, that the time is now. Teams wait years for the opportunity this team has — to become a dynasty — and the players know BriseBois is going to pull rabbits out of his hat to ensure they have their best chance for success.
“As a player, you really appreciate the effort because you never know when it’s going to be your year,” captain Steven Stamkos said during All-Star weekend in Las Vegas last month. “For us right now, it’s easy for us to dismiss draft picks because we’re probably not going to be around when they come through. We want to win right now, especially as one of the older guys. For (BriseBois) to be able to put the chips all in and get rewarded has been pretty amazing.”
Not only should the Lightning be a better team with Hagel, but they also took him off the board for other teams, which is a secondary benefit if Florida and Toronto — teams Tampa Bay might have to go through in the postseason — were among the teams that showed interest in Hagel, as was reported.
The Blackhawks got a good haul in the trade, getting NHL-ready pieces in Raddysh and Katchouk as well as first-rounders who could help them down the road. But barring Raddysh or Katchouk turning into stars, the deal won’t hurt Tampa Bay. And if Hagel helps the Lightning win a third straight Cup, the cost would be worth it.
When BriseBois traded two first-round picks to get Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow two trade deadlines ago, he was widely criticized for giving up too much. But now that the Lightning have won two Stanley Cups since, the narrative has changed. They’re lauded as savvy moves.
And when you hear BriseBois break it down, it makes sense.
“The value of draft picks lies in our ability to turn them into good NHL players,” he said. “We know what the odds are of a late first-round pick turning into an NHL player, and by trading them away, we’re giving up on those odds of the players we would have selected ending up being key contributors for us down the road four or five years from now.
“But instead we’re getting a sure thing. We’re getting a player who’s already established himself in the NHL. We get the benefit of his current contract that provides really good value and we get the benefit of him helping us chase a championship right now instead of maybe those two players turning into NHL players down the road.”
Contact Eduardo A. Encina at eencina@tampabay.com. Follow @EddieintheYard.
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