Tampa Bay Lightning: Ryan McDonagh Injury Gives Bolts Options

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.

Thanks for reading! What do you guys think the Lightning will do with the news of McDonagh’s absence? Leave a comment below!