Few teams are more intriguing a month away from the trade deadline than the confounding Tampa Bay Lightning, a club picked by many to win the Stanley Cup this season but one that begins the post-All-Star break six points out of a playoff spot.
You get the feeling this team is just too talented not to rally back into contention before it's over. Lightning GM Steve Yzerman hasn't given up on this season, either. He still believes his team has a chance.
"I think so. We're close,'' Yzerman said during the All-Star weekend festivities in Los Angeles. "At some point, we have to go on a run. We're all bunched together in the standings. One of those teams is going to go on a run, I think, and push Ottawa, Boston and Toronto for a playoff spot. Hopefully it's us.''
Tampa's best friend is an Atlantic Division that remains wide open. The Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs have both surpassed expectations, but it remains to be seen whether they can keep that up. The Boston Bruins sit third in the division, and in the last playoff spot, but have played more games than anyone else in the conference, so their point total is a bit misleading.
Still, the Bolts can only worry about themselves and steady what has been an uneven season. What a dangerous animal they would be if they got on a run and squeezed into the postseason.
The trade deadline will be an opportunity for the Lightning to try to improve their blue line, an obvious area of need. But their biggest addition of all will come sometime before the end of the regular season, when captain Steven Stamkos returns from a knee injury that has kept the center out of action since mid-November.
"We don't know his exact return date; it's still too early to predict that," said Yzerman. "But when we put him into our lineup, the matchups certainly become harder for the other team. But first we have to win enough games.''
Indeed, the Lightning need to start their run now. They can't wait for Stamkos.
As for trades, Yzerman obviously wasn't going to share his game plan, but he has two obvious issues to address: a blue-line upgrade, as noted above, and also the future of goalie Ben Bishop, who will be an unrestricted free agent on July 1.
I believe the Bolts would move Bishop before the trade deadline for the right price, but the reality -- as the Pittsburgh Penguins have also seen so far, with Marc-Andre Fleury -- is that other teams haven't shown much interest. You don't often see top goalies traded midseason. But perhaps over the next month another team will develop a need for one. If not, Tampa Bay knew it was possible it could play the whole season with Bishop and then have to let him walk and get nothing in return on July 1.
Who knows what will happen? If, say, Bishop is at the center of a furious run by the Lightning and leads them to the Cup finals, perhaps Yzerman will think about trying to re-sign him. But I don't think that's going to be the case. I believe the Bolts are committed to Andrei Vasilevskiy as their long-term solution in goal. Besides, they'll need the cap space from Bishop's expiring contract to help them land a defenseman -- not to mention re-sign pending restricted free agents such as Jonathan Drouin, Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat.
Some of my media colleagues around the league have suggested that the Lightning and St. Louis Blues could help each other out by swapping pending unrestricted free agents in Bishop and defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk. It's an interesting idea, and one I think the Bolts would be open to. But the Blues, as far as I can tell, haven't yet shown that they want a goalie upgrade. St. Louis still believes in Jake Allen.
The difficulty for Tampa Bay is that upgrading the blue line is also a priority for many other teams, all of which drives up the price to get a decent defenseman. If the D-men-rich Anaheim Ducks decide to auction off one of their guys, Tampa Bay would look into that situation. But again, so would a lot of teams.
At the end of the day, I think if Tampa Bay ever finds the right deal to upgrade its back end, it's going to cost the Lightning a good forward. They're deep there, so they can afford to make that move.
I believe that upgrading the blue line is something Tampa Bay will try to do regardless of where it is in the standings. It's something that needs to be done for next season and beyond. It's a bigger-picture need.
"What we feel are the areas we want to address, it's more of a long-term thing than a rental,'' Yzerman said. "If those opportunities come along, we'll do it."
I also think Yzerman knows this remains a very good team regardless of what has transpired this season. Playoffs or not, this isn't a roster that needs a major facelift. After a run to the Cup finals in 2015 and to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals last season, this is perhaps a team that simply ran out of gas. We've seen that before. But I wouldn't count these guys out yet.