The 32-in-32 Series is an annual event here at DobberProspects and has been condensed from two articles to one. The article will bring you: The highlighted team’s draft; insights into its off-season moves; looking at prospect risers, fallers and likely prospects to play NHL games; and of course, the writers’ top-20 prospects. Articles may be brought back when an important team update occurs, so check back because we plan to fill your hockey withdrawal needs all off-season!
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Read past 32 series stories here: https://dobberprospects.com/category/feature/32-in-32-series/
Make sure to check out the Tampa Bay Lightning team page here: https://dobberprospects.com/team/tampa-bay-lightning/
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Tampa Bay had a familiar season in 2025-26. The regular season was excellent: 50-26-6, second in the Atlantic, with Nikita Kucherov winning the Hart Trophy, Andrei Vasilevskiy the Vezina, and Jon Cooper the Jack Adams. The playoffs were the same story as the last three springs. Montreal won a first-round series in seven games, the deciding loss coming at home, and Tampa Bay was out in the opening round for the fourth year in a row.
The off-season was about patching the NHL roster, with the pipeline being steady. Darren Raddysh, coming off a franchise record for defenseman goals (22) and a 70-point year, priced himself out and was signed and traded to Toronto for a fifth-round pick. Tampa Bay covered his right-shot minutes with John Carlson on a two-year deal and added Ilya Mikheyev up front. The blue line is proven and old, with Victor Hedman at 35 and Ryan McDonagh at 37, and the cap sheet is tight, the way it always is under Julien BriseBois.
Behind the veteran core, the system is thin. What has changed is the top of the pool. A year ago the Lightning had a cluster of similar middle-six projections and little at the very top. Now there is a clear top three, and two of the three arrived by trade rather than the draft. That is the shape of this pipeline: a shallow group with a high ceiling at the top and a steep drop after it.
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NHL Draft Recap
Tampa Bay entered the weekend without a first-round pick, sent to Seattle in the Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand trade, and with seven selections. The club packaged picks to move up in the second round and left Buffalo with six players: three forwards, two defensemen, and a goaltender.
Round 2, 52nd overall: Oleg Kulebiakin, LW
Tampa Bay traded up for Kulebiakin, and the pick surprised some evaluators who had him going later. The St. Petersburg native scored 29 goals and 73 points in 64 games for the Halifax Mooseheads, and the skill is the reason. He is a high-end stickhandler who can beat defenders one-on-one in ways few players in the league can. The concerns are size and skating. He is listed under 6-0, does not play a physical game, and has to prove the feet can carry the hands at the next levels. He is committed to the University of Massachusetts for 2027-28. As the club’s top selection, he is the one to track.
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Round 3, 90th overall: Tomas Kralovic, D
Kralovic is a triple-overage defenseman out of HC Slovan Bratislava who was first eligible in 2023 and only forced his way onto boards with a 31-point season in the top Slovak league. At 6-3, with improved mobility and a heavier shot, he does a bit of everything without one loud tool. He turns pro right away with the Syracuse Crunch, and the bet is the one Tampa Bay keeps winning: a late, older pick who grows into a useful pro.
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Round 5, 134th overall: Morgan Anderberg, LW
Anderberg is a competitive Swedish winger from Vaxjo who played 39 games in the SHL as a teenager and represented Sweden at the World Junior Summer Showcase. He plays harder than his listed size and will get time to fill out at home.
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Round 5, 154th overall: Cooper Soller, F
Soller, a Los Angeles product, scored 26 goals and 49 points in his first full USHL season with Sioux Falls. He ranked second on the team in goals and profiles as a shooter worth watching on his way to college.
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Round 6, 186th overall: Stepan Shurygin, G
Tampa Bay went back to the goalie well, a habit in recent drafts, with Shurygin out of the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit. He went 24-27-3 with a 3.79 goals-against average and a .888 save percentage behind a leaky team, and the appeal is his size (6-5) and aggression in the crease.
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Round 7, 218th overall: Max Vilen, D
The Lightning closed with Vilen, a left-shot defenseman who split last season between Saint John and Moncton in the QMJHL, posting three goals and 27 points in 54 games.
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Off-Season Moves
Incoming
John Carlson, D (two years, $8.5 million per season) – The 36-year-old right shot replaces Raddysh and is expected to run a power play and eat top-four minutes.
Ilya Mikheyev, LW (four years, $3.85 million per season) – Speed and help on the penalty kill off a career-best 36-point season in Chicago.
Dennis Hildeby, G (acquired from Toronto with two draft picks for Nick Paul, $841,667 cap hit) – A 6-7 Swede brought in to back up Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Outgoing
Darren Raddysh, D (signed and traded to Toronto for a 2026 fifth-round pick) – The biggest subtraction of the summer after a career year.
Nick Paul, F (traded to Toronto in the Dennis Hildeby deal) – A middle-six forward whose role was set to shrink behind younger players.
*Several pending unrestricted free agents, including Oliver Bjorkstrand and Corey Perry, also reached the market.
Re-Signed
Quiet on this front. Tampa Bay had no major restricted free agents to sort out after locking up J.J. Moser last season, and the headline piece of business, a Nikita Kucherov extension, was still in progress as of this writing.
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In the System
Risers
Sam O’Reilly, C
O’Reilly is the return from the Isaac Howard trade with Edmonton last summer, and he turned that swap into a coup. In his draft-plus-one season, after a mid-year move from London to Kitchener, he won the Red Tilson Trophy as the OHL’s best player, the Wayne Gretzky 99 Award as the playoffs’ most valuable player, and the same honor at the Memorial Cup. That made him the fourth player in CHL history to win regular-season, playoff, and Memorial Cup most valuable player honors in the same season, after Brad Richards, Corey Perry, and Mitch Marner. He is a two-way center first. He wins puck battles, kills penalties, and projects into a reliable middle-six role, with the offense a complement rather than the calling card. He turns pro in Syracuse and is the best prospect Tampa Bay has.
Rautiainen ranked 20th a year ago. He is now the most dangerous offensive prospect in the system, and the Lightning drafted him 108th overall in 2025. He led the Liiga in scoring with 25 goals and 77 points in 58 games as a 20-year-old, a Tappara single-season club record, and he did it on a line that was not the club’s nominal top unit. He swept the regular-season honors: the Lasse Oksanen trophy as the writers’ pick for the league’s best player, the Veli-Pekka Ketola trophy as scoring champion, and the players’ Golden Helmet. He was also named Europe’s most valuable under-22 player, an honor previously won by Moritz Seider and Nils Lundkvist. Tappara won the Finnish Championship, and Rautiainen took World Junior silver with Finland on the back of his overtime winner against Sweden in the semifinal. He signed a three-year entry-level contract, but he has said plainly that he returns to Tappara on loan if he does not make the NHL roster out of camp, so he will not spend the coming season in Syracuse the way O’Reilly will. His even-strength game lives on the perimeter and has to find the middle of the ice against NHL defenders. The ceiling is the highest of any forward Tampa Bay controls, and the fantasy payoff sits a year or more out.
Jack Pridham, RW
Pridham came over from Chicago and then posted 90 points, fifth in the OHL, with Kitchener, where he was O’Reilly’s teammate and led the 2026 Memorial Cup in scoring on the way to the title. The right shot heads to the University of Denver this fall. The production and the jump to a strong program have his stock climbing.
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Fallers
Burrows managed 16 points in 43 games at the University of Denver, and the offense that made him a prospect has not shown up in college. He transfers to Notre Dame for his junior year needing a reset.
Groshev spent last season being converted from winger to defenseman at 25, a rare and late position switch that reads as the organization trying to salvage some value. Until he plays a full year on the blue line, his NHL odds are hard to read, and they point the wrong way.
Dyllan Gill, D
A 2022 pick, Gill spent last season in the ECHL with Orlando and enters the final year of his entry-level contract without an AHL role locked down. He is running out of runway.
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Likely to See NHL Action
The clearest bet is Conor Geekie, who played 14 NHL games last season, was an AHL All-Star in Syracuse, and enters the last year of his entry-level deal ticketed for a bigger role. Dylan Duke pushed into three NHL games and scored close to 60 points in the AHL, so a recall is likely if the top nine needs help. Ethan Gauthier is a right-shot option on a left-heavy Syracuse group, Lucas Mercuri brings size and an edge as a call-up, and new backup Dennis Hildeby will take NHL starts behind Vasilevskiy. If injuries pile up, O’Reilly could get a look later in the year.
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Top 20 Prospects
This section is intended to paint a picture of the Tampa Bay prospects whose current trajectory projects them making the most positive fantasy impact at the time that they reach the NHL. Arrival date and NHL certainty have been taken into consideration; however, potential upside is the most important factor in determining this list.
- Sam O’Reilly
- Conor Geekie
- Benjamin Rautiainen
- Dylan Duke
- Ethan Czata
- Ethan Gauthier
- Jack Pridham
- Everett Baldwin
- Jayson Shaugabay
- Jan Golicic
- Oleg Kulebiakin
- Noah Steen
- Tomas Kralovic
- Marco Mignosa
- Morgan Anderberg
- Gabriel Szturc
- Daniil Pylenkov
- Cooper Soller
- Joona Saarelainen
- Harrison Meneghin
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Final Thoughts
The top of this list is better than it has been in years, and the rest of it is the bill that comes due for a decade of contending. O’Reilly, Geekie, and Rautiainen all belong on a dynasty roster, and each could push for NHL time inside a season or two. After that, the pool turns into development bets, most of them on the late-round and older-junior types Tampa Bay has a long history of turning into NHL players. For the coming season, the two names to watch are O’Reilly, who starts his pro career in Syracuse, and Rautiainen, who goes back to Tappara to headline a Liiga contender while Tampa Bay waits.
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Thanks for reading. You can find me on X @epps_andrew.