During Wednesday’s game, I was asked a simple, but kind of important question as we come down to the last handful of games for the Tampa Bay Lightning. “With Mathieu Joseph, Taylor Raddysh, and Boris Katchouk gone, who would we call up for injuries?” This came right after it appeared Ondrej Palat had injured himself when he toe-picked and fell to the ice awkwardly. I gave a pretty quick answer, but I felt like it deserved a little more exploration here.
The Lightning are right up against the cap. So the reality of the situation for the rest of the regular season is that if the Lightning have two injuries at one time, the team would have to play down a player for one game before they would be given an emergency exemption to exceed the salary cap for a replacement player.