If Lightning can’t win the Stanley Cup, there’s no reason to trade

TAMPA — Has Nikita Kucherov convinced you another Stanley Cup is possible?

How about Brandon Hagel? Or Andrei Vasilevskiy? Has the hint of a playoff push convinced you the Lightning can, once again, put it all together and reach the Eastern Conference final for the seventh time in 10 seasons?

Because, if not, the Lightning need to sit out the upcoming trade deadline.

Presumably, that’s not what you want to hear. It’s certainly not what the players in the locker room want to hear, because they still believe they’re a minor adjustment away from another long playoff run.

But players do not have the future on their conscience.

And general manager Julien BriseBois does.

Making a deal before the March 8 trade deadline might mean the Lightning are a slightly better team in the 2024 playoffs, but it almost certainly means they have mortgaged another valuable asset by trading a future draft pick. And it’s not worth it for a team that has shown little evidence it can contend for the Cup.

Maybe that sounds harsh, but the stakes are too high to fall into the trap of believing there’s still some magic left in this group.

Here’s the reality:

The Lightning are giving up nearly 3.4 goals a game. The last time a team allowed that many goals per game and reached the Stanley Cup final was 31 years ago.

Ah, but you say, the Lightning have improved in recent months. Yes, but not nearly enough. Over the last 30 games going into the weekend, the Lightning have a .617 points percentage. That’s respectable, but Atlantic Division rivals Florida, Boston and Detroit have all had a higher points percentage during the same period. That means, even if you take away Tampa Bay’s slow start, the Lightning are still the fourth-best team in the Atlantic.

So what is the best argument for making a trade?

“You think about what has happened with us over the last 10 years with the quote-unquote ‘core group’ from the goalie to the D to the forwards, guys that have been with us for a while,” coach Jon Cooper said. “Those guys are not going to play forever. I think what we have seen is a group of players — for instance, the seven players who have played their first NHL games (this season), the success the American (Hockey) League team is having — that we do have some players in the pipeline. So, that’s good for us.

“I think any time you have a group (like) we have, our philosophy since I’ve been here is, ‘Let’s go try and win a Stanley Cup.’ As long as you have the guys we have in our locker room, I think that’s the goal of our organization every year.”

That’s absolutely valid. Or, at least, it was valid for a certain era.

The Lightning had a window of opportunity and pounced on it with tremendous success. They traded for Ryan McDonagh, Barclay Goodrow, Blake Coleman, David Savard, Hagel, Nick Paul and Tanner Jeannot, and had mostly wonderful results.

But the Lightning have also gone without first-round draft picks in 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. That’s a potential talent drain that could affect the franchise for years to come. Yes, you want to take advantage of a window of opportunity. But you also need to know when it’s time to close the window ahead of a storm.

Think about Pittsburgh. Like the Lightning, the Penguins had a generational core of players (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Marc-Andre Fleury) and won back-to-back Stanley Cups. The Pens also were aggressive supplementing that core through trades to take advantage of their window of opportunity. They dealt eight first-round draft picks in a 12-year span from 2013 to 2024. They kept dealing even when the wins stopped coming in bunches.

And now Pittsburgh is about to have its sixth consecutive season without winning a playoff series. Even with Crosby, Malkin and Letang still in the lineup.

Look, there is nothing wrong with compromising your future when you have a shot at glory. And even a trade that doesn’t work (and the early returns on the Jeannot deal do not look promising) can be justified if the Stanley Cup was legitimately within reach.

But that balance of risk/reward is starting to weigh on the negative side in Tampa Bay, and squeezing extra hard is not going to get any more toothpaste out of the tube.

“What I would say is there are guys in this room, guys in this core group, who have won a lot,” said Mikey Eyssimont. “There’s reason to be optimistic of what we can do once we reach the playoffs.”

Maybe it’s possible. Maybe this group is just days away from finding its groove. Maybe there is a single player on the market who can make the Lightning look like contenders again.

Or maybe it’s time to start plotting a new course before the wheels come off.

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

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