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Lightning keep dealing, send Filppula to Flyers for Mark Streit

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With Steven Stamkos injured and the Lightning underachieving, Steven Yzerman and Tampa Bay were sellers at the trade deadline in order to create cap room for next season.

With the Tampa Bay Lightning mired in a disappointing season, general manager Steve Yzerman has spent the past couple of days selling off his upcoming free agents, including Ben Bishop to Los Angeles and Brian Boyle to Toronto.

On Wednesday, he managed to clear a significant amount of salary cap space for next season.

That is when the Lightning sent forward Valtteri Filppula, a 2017 fourth-round pick, and a conditional 2017 seventh-round pick, to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for defenseman Mark Streit.

Both players had no-trade clauses in their contracts and had to OK the deal. It came after it was reported that Filppula had rejected a trade to Toronto. Streit is an unrestricted free agent after this season. The Flyers are also picking up 4.7 percent of Streit’s remaining contract for this season.

The key to this deal for Tampa Bay should seem pretty obvious: Clearing salary cap space in the future.

He is having a nice enough season for the Lightning offensively with 34 points in 59 games, but he still carries a $5 million salary cap hit for next season. That presented a significant problem for a Lightning team that has a ton of key players in need of new contracts -- including restricted free agents Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Jonathan Drouin -- and not a lot of cap space to take care of them all. The Lightning needed to find a way to shed some salary to ensure they can keep them.

With Streit’s contract expiring after this season, the Lightning just opened up $5 million in cap space for next season and all Yzerman had to do was give up a couple of late round draft picks to do it.

The Flyers, meanwhile, have spent their deadline day adding a lot of salary to next year’s cap. Along with picking up Filppula’s deal, they also re-signed forward Piere-Edouard Bellemare and goalie Michal Neuvirth to two-year contract extensions.