In two seperate deals the GM for Tampa landed a couple more marquee players for his run at the Cup. Joining the Lightning today are center Eric Lindros and winger Peter Bondra.
The Rangers and Lightning agreed on a deal that saw highly touted prospect Boris Valabik, pesty winger Vaclav Varada and a 4th rounder head to the Big Apple in exchange, the Lighning recieve "THE BIG E" Eric Lindros, goalie prospect Jason Labarbera and an undetermined amount of cash.
The second deal of the evening was reached with GM Ernie Russell of the Colorado Avalanche. Peter Bondra will now be wearing a Bolts uni and heading out west to Colorado are defensive prospect Maxim Kondratiev and Pavel Sedov.
When asked about his new acquisitions GM Joyce had this to say...
"Whenever you can add veterans such as Eric and Peter how can you not be excited. Both these players have put up huge numbers in the past and with the players we have here already we are hoping to see more of the same. Between the 2 of them they have 11 All Star Games and 1 Hart trophy. You cant put a price on that."
GM Joyce was all questioned by the media if he was worried that moving all his youth was going to leave his team in trouble down the road. He replied...
"We have moved lots of young talent over the past month or two in order to build a real powerhouse here in Tampa. With that being said there is still alot of young talent in our system and on our roster that we dont feel the need to be concerned. We got some young defencemen on the farm in Anton Volchenkov and Andrej Meszaros who will be around here in Tampa for years to come and some solid prospects in Paul Ranger, Mark Fistric and Kirill Lyamin. In goal we brought over Jason Labarbera in the deal with Lindros and we feel that he will play some solid minutes for us down the road. And at forward we have Spezza who is arguably one of the leagues elite centers and is only 23 not to mention some solid prospects in Konstantin Pushkarev and Igor Mirnov.
"I think we are sitting pretty" GM Joyce said with a smile