Quoting: MoSeider53
Tampa is in no position to be losing their young players while re-signing aging players like Stamkos. if Tampa wants to keep their cup window open they need their younger players. Tampa has one of the worst prospect pools in the league. As players like Stamkos, Hedman and Kucherov age they'll need to replace them with much younger players. Tampa is already basically declining. And keeping a 34 year old Stamkos over a much younger Anthony Cirelli makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I doubt Tampa's cup window is anymore than another 2 to 3 years at the very most. Buffalo, Detroit and Ottawa are young up and coming teams in the Atlantic teams like Boston and Tampa are in danger of even not making the playoffs here shortly.
Stamkos just had 40 goals and was ppg. While he may be 34, they'd be foolish to.let him walk unless he's asking for simply too much $. Cirelli is a good young player, but he's not untouchable.
Tampa still has several solid prospects that should at least ne able to be decent middle 6 contributors in the years ahead. Players like Howard, Gauthier, Goncalves, Finley, Huuhtanen etc all have potential to play for the big club.
As far as Tampa's window, who knows. I'd guess at least 2 or 3 more years, but let's see how some of the prospects turn out, plus other moves that JBB might make. While those other teams *may* be ascending soon enough, the only one that took any real step forward this year was Detroit, and they still missed despite the door being wide open for them. Tampa also had 98 points with Vasy missing nearly anthord.ofnthe season and then clearly not fully back for a decent chunk after that. The core is still fine in Tampa, but I figured JBB would've distributed the cap space a bit differently/more evenly between the blue line and depth F this offseason.