When Steve Yzerman was hired as the General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, he was handed a roster that had a decent amount of top end talent, but little else. He had Vincent Lecavalier on a contract that would become suffocating. He had an aging Martin St. Louis. And then he had two young stars in the making in Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman.
The Lightning had been looking for any goalie that could be even league average since Nikolai Khabibulin left after the lockout. Years of poor drafting decisions had also left the Lightning with little on the farm.