Killorn & Bolts Settle

The Tampa Bay Lightning were one of the teams that had a lot of work to do to get their roster shaped around their free agents and on Sunday, they came to terms with one of those free agents, lightening the load and avoiding some arbitration.

Alex Killorn was signed to a 7-year deal, reportedly carrying a cap hit of $4.45 million per year, which works out to a grand total of $31.15 million.  A hefty commitment, indeed!  Killorn was a restricted free agent, who had filed for the arbitration process, just as a last resort, but the two sides were able to meet at agreeable terms beforehand and I dare say, it worked in the player's favour.

In the 2016 regular season, the 26-year rough & tumble forward finished with 14 goals and 40 points in 81 games, finishing a nearly half a point per game.

When thinking about Killorn as a player and how he plays, he doesn't jump off the page as a natural point-getter in the regular season, but he can sure grind out the points in key times in the playoffs, as we have seen the last couple of years.  Adding a projection to him right now, I don't see him doing much more than what he has already accomplished, so I would only put him down for about 45 points.

The real concern now for the Lightning is trying to fit the rest of their free agents under the same roof.  With Nikita Kucherov and Vladimir Namestnikov still to go, and to a lesser extent Nikita Nesterov, the Lightning are quickly running out of space for restricted free agents.  A 23-man roster, like the one in colour below, only has about $5.8 million in wiggle room and one would have to assume that Kucherov is going to take the bulk of that in one big swoop.

There is still lots of Summer left and the Lightning may need all of it to get this job done, one way or another.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Steven Stamkos	8.500	Anton Stralman	4.500	Ben Bishop	5.950
Ryan Callahan	5.800	Victor Hedman	4.000	Andrei Vasilevskiy	0.925
Valtteri Filppula	5.000	Andrej Sustr	1.450
Alex Killorn	4.450
Ondrej Palat	3.333
Tyler Johnson	3.333
Brian Boyle	2.000	Jason Garrison	4.600
Erik Condra	1.250	Braydon Coburn	3.700
J.T. Brown	1.250
Jonathan Drouin	0.894
Cedric Paquette	0.813	Slater Koekkoek	0.894
Brayden Point	0.662	Matt Taormina	0.575
Tye McGinn	0.575
Cory Conacher	0.575
Matthew Peca	0.925	Dominik Masin	0.808	Adam Wilcox	0.925
Anthony Cirelli	0.925	Dylan Blujus	0.743	Kristers Gudlevskis	0.575
Adam Erne	0.874	Matt Spencer	0.743
Mitchell Stephens	0.839	Ben Thomas	0.690
Brian Hart	0.703	Daniel Walcott	0.650
Jonne Tammela	0.690	Jake Dotchin	0.617
Cameron Darcy	0.642	Luke Witkowski	0.575
Henri Ikonen	0.617
Joel Vermin	0.575
Tanner Richard	0.575
Gabriel Dumont	0.575
Pierre Letourneau-Leblond	0.575
Mike Halmo	0.575
Jeremy Morin	0.575
Michael Bournival	0.575

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system