As per TSN, Dan Ellis has signed with the Lightning for a 2 year contract at $ 1.5 million per. I like this signing and am thankful that we didn't overpay for Nabokov. Ellis is more of a 1A 1B goaltender than a true #1 but can get his shot to be the #1 if Mike Smith doesn't play well again this year. Plus he tweets.

As per the official Lightning twitter (yes that's how I'm getting my news today), the Lightning have re-signed St. Louis to a 4 year extension. It's $22.5 million over 4 years as per TSN, that's $5.625 cap hit per year

Only thing to note is that St. Louis is over 35 as of the signing of this contract.

Bubye Mezzy.....you never really reached your potential in Tampa and were very overpaid ($4 million cap hit). As per TSN, Andrej Meszaros to the Philadelphia Flyers for a second round draft pick in 2012.

So as you can notice I've been on a bit of a blogger vacation, not just here on LHB but on all the sites that I write for. I will be posting my thoughts of what goes down on Thursday (my thoughts on our new goalie) then will resume being on my blogger vacation for the rest of summer.

I'm using the time to recharge my batteries and my love for blogging by well, not blogging. I'll post every so often if anything comes up that I feel like writing about but not on a super consistent basis. Things will resume back to normal when the summer ends and the season starts up again. I thank you in advance for your understanding.

Dani

Heyo!

Ok, I still don't think you are that good looking of a guy, but good effort here Stamkos.

And he's not even legal to drink or gamble in the city. For shame.

Continue after the jump for more suit shots...

This is cross posted from Raw Charge where I write on Tuesday mornings. I wrote it and thought it was interesting enough to post here as well, skip over it if you have already read it.

Yesterday Cassie made a case for the Lightning to keep Antero Niittymaki and today I'm continuing on the topic of goaltenders. Today we'll tackle the conundrum that is Mike Smith.

Mike Smith is still under contract for this year and is being paid $2.4 million dollars this year with a cap hit of $2.2 million as per nhlnumbers.com. Last year he was considered the starting goalie for the Lightning only to crumble and be outplayed by his backup Niittymaki. No matter how many chances Tocchet gave him he wasn't able to win with any consistency and when didn't play well, well he looked terrible. This year fans are wishing that they could get rid of him via trade or burying him in the minors, but is that a possibility?

As per NHLSCAP.com,  Smith does not have a no-trade (NTC) or no-movement clause (NMC) in his contract (the only ones on the Lightning that have those are Vincent Lecavalier with a NMC and Martin St. Louis with a NTC). So the suggestion of burying him down in Norfolk to get his salary off of the cap is a possibility. Whether Vinik gives Yzerman to do that or not will be another thing.

Trading away Smith doesn't seem like a logical possibility. Yzerman may be a miracle worker if he can find a team that wants to trade for Smith. He's a player that had a concussion and took months to recover from it. Even in his return his play wasn't up to the potential people saw him have when he was playing back in Dallas. And with a year of inconsistent play with a $2.4 million dollar salary, well he doesn't have a lot going for him as far as market value especially with the huge class of goaltenders on the market this off season.

I think what happens with Smith will depend a lot on how much Yzerman is allowed to spend in payroll this year. If Yzerman does not spend to the ceiling of the cap then it really doesn't matter if they have Smith as a possible starter/tandem, backup or AHL goaltender since they will be paying his salary either way. Yzerman may decide to take the chance on Smith since they are paying him no matter where he is as a with a backup goaltender and hope that he can win the limited games that he starts.

But if Yzerman is allowed to spend closer to the ceiling of the cap and decides that Smith's time in Tampa is done, he may go after any one or two of the UFA's this summer and put Smith in the minors all year. Or perhaps a team might take a chance at picking him up at half price if he goes through waivers during the season. We'll see what the future of Smith will be in a few days when we see which new goaltender(s) ends up signing with the Lightning, but since we have a few days to debate it: what would you do with Smith if you were GM?

To end off the week on a funny note, today I have my guest writer DTV providing this post. If you want to read more of his stuff, check out his blog at Don't Trade Vinny or his twitter. Anyways, I'm always glad when he sends me random bits of funnyness, I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I do.

What Guy Boucher Really Said in French

The only real moment of weirdness in Boucher’s welcome interview the other day was a 15-20 second snippet of him speaking to some members of the Canadiens brass in French.  As many of you probably were, I was wondering just exactly what the hell he was saying. Well, as always, I (DTV) did some digging, and found a translation:

“Listen Montreal, I understand some of you are a little upset with me.  I get it.  But look, the guy they had the last two years was a REAL dumbass.  Someone had to come and save these poor bastards.  I know how familiar you guys are with Mr. Vincent Lecavalier. That idiot didn’t even have him on the top line. Can you believe that?

Anyway, I want to thank you again for the opportunities I had there, and the Canadiens will always be in my heart.

Look, um, while I’m thinking of it, how attached are you guys to Mr. Halak? The goalies here are a couple of bumbling idiots that my twin daughters could out-play.  And I know how fond of riots you guys are, sticking Mr. Price back in goal may earn you a few more.

Listen, I know this is Stevie’s job, but, we’ll give you Mr. Mike Smith, Mr. Matt Walker, a draft pick, and ah hell, Mr. Alex Tanguay for Mr. Halak and Mr. Subban.  Have your people call my people. Make it happen.”

We already knew that the Lightning would play a pre-season game against the Blackhawks in Winnipeg, but today the Lightning announced the full 2010 pre-season schedule. For my complete thoughts and the schedule, check out my post over at Raw Charge

Coming into the last year of St. Louis' contract, Cristodero of the St. Petersburg Times reports that Yzerman is making a contract extention for diminuitive forward "a priority".

"I actually had a chance to speak to his agent, and we'll start the discussion and go from there," Yzerman said. "(St. Louis is) a first-class guy, and he deserves to be treated with the utmost respect, and I'll do that. Where it ends up, we'll see, but it definitely is a priority for me."

He is in the last year of his contract that pay $4 million with a cap hit of $5.25 million. As I've said previously, the biggest thing that Yzerman will have to think about in giving him a contract extension will be that St. Louis will be over 35 when he signs even if he doesn't play out the end of the contract the cap hit will still count.