Yesterday, the Tampa Bay Lightning re-acquired Ryan McDonagh from the Nashville Predators in exchange for draft picks. McDonagh helped the Lightning win back-to-back Stanley Cup championships before being dealt out to Nashville.
Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Colby Cohen discuss the trade and what it entails for the Lightning.
Tyler Yaremchuk: From Tampa Bay’s perspective, you got to sign Steven Stamkos this summer, I’m not sure if adding a big defenseman in his mid-to-late 30s at a $6.5 million cap hit is the right move to keep this window open when I thought they should be trying to get younger and cheaper, not older and more expensive.
Colby Cohen: I’m going to go the opposite on this one because I love this move. I love it because of what Tampa thinks of themselves, they think they can win a Stanley Cup in the next year or two. You look at the market right now and Frank has talked about this, Zadorov is looking for $6 million a year and he is a third-pairing defenseman. A top-pair defenseman, a guy who is out there in the last minutes of the game, a proven leader is back on your team. Now look at Tampa’s backend, they got Hedman, Sergachev, Cernak and now McDonagh back. You can run that out with cheaper guys like Perbix and Raddysh.
