Tampa Bay Lightning: Ryan McDonagh Injury Gives Bolts Options
The Tampa Bay Lightning have lost defenseman Ryan McDonagh to an upper-body injury and is out on a week-to-week basis. However, JonCooper stated it isn’t looked at as a season-ending injury.
Ryan McDonagh has slowly cemented himself onto the Tampa Bay Lightning roster as the second-best defenseman, behind Victor Hedman after being dealt by the New York Rangers almost two years ago.
He has arguably been the most reliable Lightning blueliner when defending his own end. McDonagh has also formed a formidable duo with Erik Cernak, who has also established himself as a top-4 defender on the Lightning. That said, McDonagh’s injury is a major loss for the Lightning, especially now when every team is going the extra mile in every game to make the playoffs.
However, maybe this injury is a blessing in disguise? It’s never good to lose a player to injury, regardless of how good they are or what role they play. But it happened and we cannot erase it from existence. We can’t bring McDonagh back at the snap of our fingers with perfect health. All we can do is look towards what options the Lightning have moving forward.
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Trust me, there are a few good options the Lightning have, including these three options: Place McDonagh on Long-Term IR (LTIR) until the playoffs and make a deadline deal, call-up a young, unproven defenseman up from Syracuse and see if he can carve out a role, or roll with what we have now on defense.
Option 1: McDonagh on LTIR
One of the options, and easily the most far-fetched in my opinion, is placing McDonagh on LTIR until the playoffs, then trading for a defenseman at the deadline. For those that don’t know, when you place a player on LTIR, you get the full cap relief, up until that player returns, of course.
So, if McDonagh were to be placed on LTIR, the Lightning would receive $6,750,000 in cap relief. Also, if McDonagh remains on LTIR up until the conclusion of the regular season, then they can keep everyone on the roster, including McDonagh, in the playoffs, as there is no salary cap in the postseason.
They don’t have to go crazy with who they bring in. They could play it simple, trading for a depth defenseman. According to TSN’s Trade Bait board, some depth defenders include Dylan DeMelo, Ron Hainsey, Zach Bogosian, and Marco Scandella, while more expensive defenders include Jeff Petry, Brenden Dillon, Sami Vatanen, Shayne Ghostisbehere and Alec Martinez.
You have to imagine that if the Lightning grab a cheap option on defense to help aid with the loss of McDonagh, they could use the rest of the space they have on some depth forwards, which includes, but is not limited to Ilya Kovalchuk, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, and Ryan Donato. More expensive forward options include, but are not limited to, Tyler Toffoli, Chris Kreider, Andreas Athanasiou, and Mikael Granlund.
To reiterate, the likelihood of this happening is slim to none. It’s already established that his injury isn’t season-ending, which suggests they aren’t willing to place him on LTIR for the remainder of the season. However, if the next two options fail to succeed, this would be their desperation move.
Option 2: Call-up Callan Foote or Dominik Masin
To me, this would be the best option, even if it doesn’t work out. Think about it for a second, the Lightning have tested their young defensemen in the past, with two prime examples happening last season. It’s also happened with young forwards, too.
Last year, the Lightning dealt with several injuries on their blueline. It led to the promotion of long-shot (at the time) defenseman, Erik Cernak. He was thrown into a rotation with Braydon Coburn, Dan Girardi, Anton Stralman, and Mikhail Sergachev. He wound up playing so well that he was no longer rotated in and out of the lineup, solidifying the spot across from McDonagh. This year, when McDonagh has been out, he’s gotten an opportunity on the first pairing with Hedman.
Also, last year, after Cernak had already carved out a role on the Lightning, there were more injuries. It led to recent trade acquisition, Jan Rutta, to get a roster spot. He also produced well enough to consistently draw into the lineup, and up until the playoffs, was really good.
This year, the Lightning dealt with several injuries to forwards, along with a few players under-performing, which led to Carter Verhaeghe being rewarded a spot to start the season and then, eventually, Mitchell Stephens getting awarded a call-up. Neither rookie forward has looked back since.
Because of the patterns developed over the last year or so, it would come as no surprise that the Lightning would award guys like Dominik Masin and Cal Foote an opportunity. Not to mention, Masin and Foote look better at the AHL level than Cernak did at the time of his call-up.
Why not give them an opportunity to prove they belong on the Lightning roster? Why not re-establish that blueline rotation they had last year, this time including Foote instead of Cernak. Even if neither of those young defenders pans out down the stretch, they are waiver exempt and could be sent back down to Syracuse.
But those young guys are playing well with Syracuse, so why would you want to rip them away and possibly hurt their progression? Which brings me to my next point.
Option 3: Don’t make a move at all
This option seems to be the route the Lightning are going. Following the injury to McDonagh, the Lightning promoted Cameron Gaunce, as opposed to Foote or Masin. He could be a stop-gap player, simply holding a spot on the roster to prepare for option 1, or he was called up as insurance. Besides, the Lightning have plenty of defensemen to utilize in order to eat up the minutes McDonagh is leaving behind. At 5v5, the Lightning d-core will look something like this:
Hedman-Kevin Shattenkirk
Sergachev-Cernak
Coburn/Rutta-Luke Schenn
With McDonagh out, Sergachev has the chance to prove himself in a big way, especially since he is an upcoming restricted free agent. Shattenkirk was paired with Hedman in the early parts of the year and still gets thrown out on the ice from time to time with Hedman, so it wouldn’t be unrealistic to see them go back to that pairing.
The bottom pair would be some combination of those three bottom d-pair guys the Lightning have bottled up in recent years, with an emphasis on Schenn for two reasons. Firstly, he is the only right-handed defenseman out of the three guys there. Also, he plays on the penalty kill and could help eat some PK minutes that McDonagh leaves behind.
Cernak, Hedman, Rutta and Schenn will be consistent PK defensemen for the Lightning in the absence of McDonagh (who leads the team in PK time on ice). McDonagh didn’t draw much in the form of PP time, therefore there won’t be much change in that area.
With all the defensemen that the Lightning currently have, why would the Lightning look elsewhere and give up assets to acquire a new guy? Why would the Lightning want to take a risk on hurting the development of Foote and Masin when they have enough blueliners as is?
At the same time, why wouldn’t they want to get some cap relief and aid their team at the deadline, especially considering their “why fix what isn’t broken” stance at the last deadline led to a first-round sweep? Why wouldn’t the Lightning at least look at what they have in their pipeline in the forms of Foote and Masin, especially considering call-ups of Cernak, Rutta, Stephens and Verhaeghe have all worked out quite well? Why sit still and wait for McDonagh to get healthy and risk losing momentum down the key stretch of the regular season, especially considering they’re in a very tough division and conference?
Nobody knows what tricks Julien BriseBois has up his sleeves this season, but you have to imagine he hasn’t forgotten about last season’s shortcomings. You have to imagine he’s looking somewhere to help somewhat replace the hole left behind by McDonagh’s injury absence. But it’s just as easy to think that the Lightning already have everything they need, and they should just have patience; there’s no need for desperation, so don’t go trading prospects to fix a problem that may or may not arise.
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Thanks for reading! What do you guys think the Lightning will do with the news of McDonagh’s absence? Leave a comment below!