Four First-Round Exits Is Not a Plan

• 

Gourde and James are hurt. O'Reilly and Duke are ready. Tampa Bay has two months to stop playing it safe.

Ernie Norquist, Thunderstruck Sports

The Lightning open the season Thursday at Madison Square Garden two centers short.

Yanni Gourde is out until December after offseason hip surgery. Dominic James broke his hand in training and will miss the first few weeks.

That is a real loss. Gourde played all 82 games last season, averaged 16:22 a night and finished 10th in Selke Trophy voting. James became the first Lightning rookie to score in a Game 7.

It is also an open door.

Sam O’Reilly and Dylan Duke should be the ones walking through it.

O’Reilly is 20. Last season he was the OHL’s most outstanding player. Then MVP of the OHL playoffs. Then MVP of the Memorial Cup. He has two straight junior titles and put up 71 points between London and Kitchener.

Duke has done his time in Syracuse. He led the Crunch with 32 goals and 59 points in 72 games. He scored on his first NHL shot, at Detroit on Feb. 8, 2025. He was a fourth-round pick, 126th overall, and he keeps outplaying where he was drafted.

Camp backed it up. O’Reilly skated with Gage Goncalves and Conor Geekie. He killed penalties next to Jeffrey Viel. Against Florida on Sept. 25, he fed Geekie on a 2-on-0 for the tying goal. Brayden Point said the speed of the NHL game “comes quick” for “a guy with his smarts.”

When it came to Victor Hedman, I sided with experience. Down the middle this fall, I side with the kids.

Now the other side. It deserves a fair shake.

The openings are temporary. James should be back in a few weeks. Gourde returns in December and is signed through the 2030-31 season. When both are healthy, the math changes fast.

The math is already tight. Tampa Bay has about $1.88 million in projected cap space with all 23 roster spots filled.

The veterans have earned their looks, too. Jansen Harkins scored twice against Florida. Viel stood out in the second preseason game. Pontus Holmberg and Zemgus Girgensons bring the defensive detail Jon Cooper trusts. Filling a short-term hole with players who already know the system is not a crazy idea. It is how Cooper has done it for years.

Then there is development. A skill player can stall in a limited role. In Syracuse, O’Reilly would play top-six minutes, run a power-play unit and kill penalties every night.

Waivers matter. A prospect on an entry-level deal can go down without the other 31 teams getting a crack at him. A veteran often cannot.

History is on the side of patience. Syracuse has been the Lightning’s AHL home since 2012-13. Goncalves, the man who ended Game 6 in Montreal last spring, came up through the Crunch.

All fair. None of it closes the door.

The openings being temporary is the best reason to hand them to the kids. Two months without Gourde is an audition with almost no downside. If O’Reilly or Duke struggles, the Lightning can send him to Syracuse the next morning. If either one takes off, Tampa learns something it could never learn from an AHL box score.

The development worry changes with the role. Before the injuries, O’Reilly was looking at eight to 10 minutes on the fourth line. With Gourde and James out, the job looks more like 15 minutes as the third-line center.

That is not a bench seat. That is a classroom.

Duke has nothing left to prove in the minors. He is 23. Two seasons in Syracuse. Team leader in goals. Another month in the AHL tells the front office nothing it does not already know.

The cap and waiver concerns shrink for a short-term fill-in. Entry-level deals are cheap, and a prospect can move between Tampa and Syracuse freely.

Then the big one.

Four straight first-round exits.

The veteran-heavy bottom six has not carried this team out of April. Two months of real auditions is the lowest-risk way to find out whether the answer is already in the building.

The real decision comes in December. The standard should be simple. Outplay a veteran, keep the sweater.

If one of them heads north, Syracuse knows the assignment. Ethan Gauthier was sent down Sept. 25 after putting up 18 points in his final 25 games last season, and the plan is to make him a second-line call-up option. Same blueprint here. Top-line minutes. Power-play time.

Tampa’s defensive standards. Every night.

Injuries always come. The Lightning leaned hard on Crunch call-ups last season. A kid who spends October in Tampa and the winter in Syracuse will be ready when the phone rings.

Here is the prediction.

O’Reilly dresses on opening night at the Garden. Duke gets his shot before James is back. By the time Gourde is healthy in December, at least one of them will have made Cooper’s decision a hard one.

The door is open. Let the kids walk through it.

Puck drops Thursday.