David Savard trade yet another showcase of the Lightning’s crafty cap management

Steve Yzerman may be long gone from the Tampa Bay Lightning, but his magical trading powers still lingers. It is trade deadline season in the NHL, with deals starting to trickle in as 3 p.m. ET on Monday rapidly approaches, and the latest move is a doozy.

On Saturday, the NHL had a rare three-way trade between the Lightning, the Detroit Red Wings, and the Columbus Blue Jackets in a deal that sent defenseman David Savard to Tampa Bay. Savard was the Blue Jackets’ biggest trade chip this deadline and the Lightning won the war to get the most coveted defenseman on the market.

It’s a whopper of a trade, but the biggest thing to note is that Columbus dealt Savard to Detroit first, retaining 50 percent of his salary, before he was moved to Tampa Bay after the Red Wings retained another 50 percent.

In total, the Lightning spent three draft picks (their first and fourth in 2021, then their third in 2022) to acquire Savard at 25 percent of his $4.25 million cap hit.

That, right there, is some Yzerman magic from Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois.

Tampa Bay is no stranger to making trades with tight cap room. In last year’s offseason, the Lightning traded away Braydon Coburn and Cedric Paquette to the Senators for Marian Gaborik and Anders Nilsson. The trade would have cost them more salary cap space, had it not been for the fact that Tampa Bay put both players on long-term injured reserve and banked enough cap room to make them compliant before the start of the 2020-21 season.

The team’s former general manager Yzerman was known for his crafty moves when he was manning the Lightning roster, so it’s no surprise to see him help out his former team with this Savard deal.

Even still, how do the Lightning keep on getting away with making these deals? Currently, Tampa Bay has over $98 million on their cap, well above the $81.5 million flat cap the NHL has instituted for the year. And yet, the Lightning have $17.3 million coming off the books in LTIR, meaning they barely squeak in under the cap with this new deal.

The biggest offense people have found with the Lightning’s savvy cap maneuvering has been with former league MVP Nikita Kucherov. In December, Tampa Bay announced Kucherov would miss the entire 2020-21 regular season due to a hip injury that required surgery, and his $9.5 million cap hit would slide to LTIR in the process. Since then, Kucherov has skated on the ice in practice and looks to be back with his team by the postseason, where then his cap hit wouldn’t matter.

For some, the timing is… off. Just when the Lightning need to clear salary cap space, Kucherov’s contract — the second-biggest on the team — was able to slide off the books and onto LTIR for the season. While the optics look bad, it’s hard to believe the Lightning would sacrifice an entire regular season without their best player just to be cap compliant.

And yet! Saturday’s move is another example of just how good the Lightning organization is at maneuvering through the NHL’s cap regulations on a knife’s edge. With this trade, Tampa Bay stays under the cap, but also gains a solid defensive defenseman in Savard to bolster their roster as the team looks to go back-to-back as Stanley Cup champions.

Is this trade legal by the NHL’s standards? Yes. Is it still a cunning way to exploit loop holes in the league’s cap system? Also yes.

How other NHL teams still play right into Tampa Bay’s hands after all this time, however, is anyone’s guess.