Netcrashing: Are the Lightning a Good Fit for Yzerman?

I thought this question, posted on TSN.ca, was kind of funny: "Are the Tampa Bay Lightning a good fit for new General Manager Steve Yzerman?" I mean, isn't the whole point of hiring a new GM for your professional sports team to have him take his philosophy and try to apply it to the team he is joining to try and achieve the best results possible? Unfortunately, you can't really ask the question, "is Steve Yzerman a good fit for the Tampa Bay Lightning and all the pieces they have in place?" because Yzerman has only put together all-star teams for international competitions and that is not a very good gauge of putting together an NHL club team.

I can take this from another direction though, Steve Yzerman will have the luxury of a good core group of players and salary cap flexibility, which should allow for Yzerman's vision of a good NHL hockey club rise to the top faster than in an organization having all sorts of cap issues and player troubles.  So in that way, yes, the Lightning are a great fit for Yzerman.

I had already laid out how the Lightning were going to look this Summer going into this new job in my Pool Outlook at the end of April and I thought that it would be a pretty good job for any prospective GM to take over, especially if the new ownership lets you work unfettered. 

Now that Yzerman is the big boss man in Tampa Bay, the name alone should have a lot of respect from the players in place, so any hockey decisions will be placed upon the merits of his reputation for the time being and likely taken as a pretty sound idea... until proven otherwise.  I only say this in regards to the situation with all of the seasoned (and expensive) veterans on the team that may or may not fit into the new manager's vision of the Tampa Bay Lightning going forward.  Vincent Lecavalier has been one of those players rumoured to be on the trading block because of his enormous contract and the 10 years still left on it.  But with the cap situation the way that it is going into the Entry Draft in June, I don't suspect that Lecavalier or Martin St. Louis will be heading anywhere anytime soon.

I like this move by the Lightning ownership group, I think it's sound and we finally get Steve Yzerman back in a central role in the NHL, which just adds a little bit more class to the whole league.