Tampa Bay Lightning taking significant risk with Tyler Johnson

By signing Tyler Johnson to a seven-year deal worth $35 million total, the Tampa Bay Lightning are taking a significant, but necessary, risk.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have been living on the edge in recent years. Despite constantly facing salary cap crunching moves, they’ve remained very competitive. A lot of this is because of general manager Steve Yzerman, who takes the necessary risks required to succeed in the NHL while limiting his bad moves. On Tuesday night, the general manager took a huge gamble on Tyler Johnson, signing the productive, but injury prone and inconsistent, forward to a seven-year deal worth $5 million per season.

Yzerman’s decision to do so is a bit curious, but it’s understandable. Considering the Lightning’s salary cap situation, it’s safe to say the team knew they could either keep Jonathan Drouin or Johnson, but not both.

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After being traded to the Montreal Canadiens for top blue line prospect Mikhail Sergachev and a potential second round pick, Drouin got a long-term deal worth $5.5 million per season. It’s likely his trade value factored into the Lightning’s decision to keep Johnson and trade the younger player. Sergachev adds some much needed talent to their blue line and could wind up being a first pairing caliber defenseman. At worst, he has a puck possession skill set covetable in today’s NHL.

However, choosing to gamble on Johnson is a risky move by Yzerman. When he’s been healthy, he’s proven he can carry the team for extended periods of time. For example, Johnson has 40 points in his last two postseasons (43 games). At some point, the small sample size stands out, and that’s what’s happening here.

But at the same time, Johnson has been maddeningly inconsistent and injury prone. In his first two full NHL seasons, he had 53 goals and 122 points in 158 games. However, in Johnson’s last two seasons, he has 83 points in 136 games. Also, he had a negative even strength relative CorsiFor percentage for the second straight time in his career, with a -3.1 percent mark. To be fair though, the Lightning are an excellent puck possession team. So perhaps it’s just a blip on the radar. Johnson’s numbers last year away from Nikita Kucherov should be setting off some red flags, however.

Usually, teams give seven-year deals to players they know can make a consistent impact. Johnson doesn’t fall in this category. However, though it’s been two seasons since he’s done so, he’s proven he can be an impact player. Injuries have certainly factored into Johnson’s decline the past two seasons.

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While his extension seems like a bad idea by Yzerman, he really didn’t have much of a choice. Johnson’s contract are the kinds that define general managers and might get them fired. Yzerman’s picking an interesting player to take a huge gamble on.

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