Good morning, all! It’s Day 2 of the 2024 NHL Draft, which means, hopefully, the Tampa Bay Lightning will be adding some players to their organization. Starting in the fourth round, they have five picks today, but that could change if there are any trades made out in the desert.
As we talked about yesterday, the chances of the Bolts landing a future hall-of-fame player are not zero, but it’s pretty close. The good news is that they can use help at just about every position, so all of the picks will fill a need in some way.
We will be providing pick-by-pick coverage for the Bolts today with some deeper analysis later in the week.
There weren’t too many surprises last night as Macklin Celebrini went first overall and, for the most part, the picks went in a natural order without too many reaches. Celine Dion and Michael Buffer showed up, which was nice. There were no blockbuster trades involving actual on-ice players, so that took away from some fun of the first night.
It also limited the use of the league’s blaring trade horn to just pick swaps which seems like a bit of an overkill for a pretty neat addition. The Sphere itself looked fantastic in TV with the folks in the building commenting how much cooler it was in person.
Leave it to the NHL to finally have a groundbreaking event (it was the first live broadcast and first sporting event from the location) and then totally abandon the entire concept.
So, sit back, enjoy your Saturday and we’ll keep you updated with all of the happenings.
