As happy as another team might be to get Ben Bishop, the biggest “winner” of a hypothetical trade might just be Kristers Gudlevskis.
At the moment, Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy are the Tampa Bay Lightning’s top two goalies, so it’s not too surprising that the Bolts demoted Gudlevskis to the AHL.
This moves Tampa Bay’s training camp roster down to 27 players.
At 24, Gudlevskis might be feeling a little anxious for more NHL reps - he’s appeared in two games overall - although it wouldn’t hurt for him to put up better AHL numbers.
His numbers with the Syracuse Crunch won’t exactly force Bishop out of town:
2013-14: .901 save percentage
2014-15: .900 save percentage
2015-16: .907 save percentage
Yeah, it probably would help his cause to put up better numbers with the Crunch.