Even with the Tampa Bay Lightning losing Yanni Gourde and his $5 million/year cap hit to the Seattle Kraken, they are still looking to shed salary to get under the salary cap for the start of next season.
Pierre LeBrun was on TSN’s Insider Trading and reports the #1 priority for the Lightning is to find Tyler Johnson a new home. Johnson was waived twice before this past season as Tampa tried to move him then but went unclaimed.Â
LeBrun went on to say, he’s got three more years on his deal at $5 million. He’s got 22 teams on his partial no-trade list. That list was submitted a while back and it’s an absolute priority now for Tampa to try and find a home for a player they really respect but obviously need to move for cap reasons.
The two options the Lightning have right now with Johnson are, find a trading partner and offer them Johnson plus a draft pick(s) to move his contract, this is what the Flyers did with Shayne Gostisbehere and receive nothing in return.
The 2nd option is buy him out. But that will still be costly. If he is bought out, he would carry a roughly $1 million cap hit this season, a $2.8 million hit in 2022-23, $1.8 million in 2023-24, and then a $1.5 million hit from 2024-25 through 2026-27.
