Julien BriseBois, the general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, has the sort of resume that makes you question what you’ve been doing with your own life. The 45-year-old owns a law degree, a Master’s degree in business administration and has more than 20 years of NHL experience under his belt.
His fingerprints are all over the Stanley Cup, too, having played a significant role in building the Lightning into a juggernaut that is playing for a third straight championship in a league where that level of sustained excellence isn’t supposed to happen.
This is not a coincidence.
BriseBois is hockey’s answer to baseball’s Theo Epstein, and his deep understanding of the salary cap allowed the Lightning to blossom into a contender and remain there even after they started bleeding talent. Most general managers hire someone with expertise to manage their cap. The Lightning are getting a 2-for-1 deal with BriseBois, who has very few clear mistakes to show for a series of bold trades and shrewd signings in recent years.
And yet the notion seems to exist — if only in the cacophony of Twitter — that the Lightning’s unparalleled success is the product of some shady manoeuvring around the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement.
It stems largely from last year, when Nikita Kucherov missed the entirety of a COVID-shortened regular season following hip surgery and returned for Game 1 of the playoffs, but it persists enough that Gary Bettman was asked Wednesday about the “loopholes” the Lightning have used during his annual state of the league address.
“They’re not using loopholes,” the NHL commissioner said. “They’re using effective cap management. Everybody’s operating under the same agreement.”
That sentiment was echoed in an informal poll of rival executives this week. I couldn’t find anyone who took issue with the way the Lightning have managed their roster or cap.
Said one exec: “I think what they did was entirely legal. This is what happens when you have a lawyer, a former cap guy, who is bloodthirsty and wants to win at all costs as your GM.”
If anything, we should probably be asking why more owners aren’t rushing to hire candidates with a legal background like BriseBois to run their hockey teams or, alternatively, what systemic changes the NHL could implement to make the long-term injured reserve provision more clear while maintaining a hard-cap system. Pointing a finger at the Lightning is pointing it in the wrong direction. They’ve taken the spirit of the rules in place and figured out how to best operate under them.
Take L’Affaire Kucherov: That was only able to play out as it did because of the 56-game season. The five-month recovery for his right hip procedure fell exactly in line with other NHLers who have gone through something similar and it left the team without one of the world’s top players for the entirety of the year. There was no guarantee he would be able to jump into the most competitive games possible and make the impact he did. The odds were arguably against it.
The NHL closely monitors these situations, requesting documentation in cases where a player finishes the regular season on long-term injured reserve and gets activated for the playoffs. The Lightning didn’t have anyone who fell under that category this season. Kucherov and defenseman Zach Bogosian were on long-term injured reserve during parts of the season but played 47 and 48 games respectively. Brent Seabrook was there — he was acquired from Chicago for a second-round pick in a move that allowed Tampa to dump Tyler Johnson last summer — but Seabrook hasn’t played since the 2019-20 season.
BriseBois, meawhile, managed to replace an entire checking line that was lost after last year’s Stanley Cup parade; Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow departed in free agency and Yanni Gourde went to Seattle in the expansion draft. He remained cap compliant by the slimmest of margins this year while acquiring Brandon Hagel and Nick Paul before the March trade deadline, and he sat out a haul of draft picks and organizational depth pieces Mathieu Joseph, Boris Katchouk and Taylor Raddysh to complete those deals.
It was a masterclass.
The NHL had a discussion at its most recent GMs meeting about contemplating tweaks to long-term injured reserve or perhaps implementing a cap during the playoffs. It’s telling that they opted against change. That discussion was driven in part by concerns about how the Vegas Golden Knights were managing their roster and injury situations, but ultimately those injuries played a role in the team missing the playoffs.
“I think the fears that were out there in the media with respect to how the cap is being manipulated didn’t come to fruition,” Bill Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner, said. “So the fact of the matter is our regular season is so important the clubs don’t have the luxury really to mess with the rosters down the stretch.
“And I think that was proven this year.”
You can include Daly among those who don’t find issues with the Lightning’s cap management strategy.
“I see all 32 clubs operate and I can tell you Tampa would not be one that I’d put at the top of the list,” Daly said.
Should the Lightning find a way past Colorado and lift the Stanley Cup again, there should be no asterisk applied to that incredible achievement. They’re the class of the NHL, both on the ice and off it.
And they may just have a deeper understanding of the rules than their competitors, too.
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