The long, dark regional nightmare is finally over. After dragging negotiations to the absolute limit (no, really, the deadline for rosters to be set was 5:00pm Tuesday) the Tampa Bay Lightning have re-signed Nikita Kucherov. The 23-year-old Russian is now set to make an average of $4.766 million over the next 3 years. That will buy a lot of room service.
Rumors began trickling out Monday afternoon that a deal would be done. Then the Lightning announced that Joel Vermin, Erik Condra and Cory Conachar were put on waivers.