Tampa Bay Lightning's 1% Chance At Keeping Alex Killorn

All signs point to Alex Killorn heading to free agency in the offseason as there just isn't room to keep him around on the Tampa Bay Lightning without some serious work that I don't think is worth it for them to do. That being said, we are going to explore the very slim possibility that the Lightning do work things around and everything aligns for them to keep him past this season.

The things working against the Lightning are the contract extensions of Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak, and Nick Perbix all kicking in for next season. That's a total of $7.683 million AAV added on to the team's salary cap. Now let's take into account as well that Ross Colton and Tanner Jeannot are RFAs and need new contracts at the end of the season. All of the other players on the team becoming UFAs are signed on cheap deals already, so there isn't much room to downgrade to league-minimum there.

What the Lightning may have going for them is Killorn's willingness to take less to stay around if he decides. Part of the reason why players do that is so they can have a better chance of winning. Since Killorn and the Lightning have already won two Stanley Cups, there may be less incentive for him to do that and more for him to take his payday which will likely go up from the $4.45 million AAV he's been earning.

Seeing how Andrei Vasilevskiy has played 59 games this season and he's only been given a little relief as of late because the Lightning are already locked into a first round matchup, the Lightning can save themselves a small bit of cap by downgrading to a goaltender making league-minimum ($750,000) instead of the $900,000 Brian Elliott is earning. There is also no way the Lightning will be able to sign Ian Cole, so his $3 million will be off the books. The last two things that will make a difference is how much the cap goes up and the reduced salary of Philippe Myers.

Given all that has to go into being able to extend Killorn, I really don't think it's going to happen. He's 33 years old and the team will be focusing on the future instead.