After a dearth of player-centered trades on Day 1 of the 2024 NHL draft, there was a blockbuster to begin Day 2.
One team might be able to keep its captain and possibly add another big player, while the other showed it’s serious about taking big swings ahead of the first season in franchise history.
The Tampa Bay Lightning took an opportunity to potentially solve their Steven Stamkos problem by trading defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to the Utah Hockey Club for defenseman J.J. Moser, center Conor Geekie, a 2025 second-round pick (via Toronto) and a 2024 seventh-round pick.
It’s a trade with quite a bit of significance for several reasons.
Which GM did better in the swap? Here are our grades for both teams.
Entering the weekend with the most cap space in the NHL made Utah a team to watch. How it used that cap space Saturday showed that the club is serious about trying to win in its first season.
Utah GM Bill Armstrong’s years of financial management from his time with the Arizona Coyotes is what allowed his new team to be able to take on such a large contract in a way other teams couldn’t. It also allowed Armstrong a chance to revamp the team’s defense substantially.
Sergachev is coming off a season that saw him fracture his tibia and fibula in his left leg back in early February. He would miss 80 days, but returned in Game 4 of the Lightning’s first-round series against the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers to play 17:01 while recording an assist.
If Utah gets a healthy Sergachev, he’s a defenseman who broke through in the 2022-23 season to score 10 goals and a career-best 64 points while averaging 23:48 in ice time. The 2023-24 season saw Sergachev score two goals and 19 points in 34 games, averaging 22:23 minutes.
Armstrong traded for Sergachev and then made another trade to get John Marino and a 2024 fifth-round pick from the New Jersey Devils, with a 2024 second-round pick and a 2025 second-round pick via Edmonton going in the other direction.
Sergachev and Marino give Utah a pair of mid-20s defensemen who are also under contract for at least three more seasons. That gives Utah a foundation as it seeks to finalize its plans on the back end with Sean Durzi and Juuso Valimaki being pending restricted free agents, while Josh Brown and Travis Dermott are pending unrestricted free agents.
While Sergachev and Marino cost Utah a combined $12.9 million in cap space, it leaves Utah with what Cap Friendly projects is $29.414 million in cap space, while retaining enough draft capital to help facilitate another deal should Armstrong find it necessary.
Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois said Friday that Stamkos, who is a pending unrestricted free agent, and the club hadn’t reached an agreement on a new contract, adding he didn’t know if they would.
Moving on from Sergachev and an $8.5 million annual cap hit for the next seven seasons allowed them to go from what Cap Friendly projected was $5.335 million in cap space to $13.835 million. But that was for only a few minutes when the Lightning traded Tanner Jeannot and his $2.665 million contract to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for a 2024 fourth-round pick and a 2025 second-round pick.
That gives the Lightning a grand total of $16.5 million in projected cap space, which greatly changes the narrative around them in the coming days.
Creating that sort of cap space means they should be able to get a deal done with the 34-year-old Stamkos, who went from facing questions about his longevity to playing more than 79 games in each of the past three seasons, including his seventh 40-goal effort, in 2023-24.
But the Stamkos bit is only one aspect of this trade; it could also mean they are a serious player in the Jake Guentzel sweepstakes.
This was also a deal that allowed the Lightning to get younger while adding draft capital.
In Moser’s time with the Arizona Coyotes, he emerged as a player who could handle the demands of being a top-pairing defenseman and play in different situations.
He’s a pending restricted free agent who will need a new contract. But he also provides the Lightning with a younger option at a potentially team-friendly cost, as Calvin de Haan, Matt Dumba and Haydn Fleury are also pending UFAs.
Geekie, who was a first-round pick by the Coyotes in 2022, gives the club another prospect who could help them in the future. Adding two draft picks in addition to the two they received from the Kings provides them more capital to restock a system that had been depleted in recent years.