As reported on earlier here, the Lightning have traded star center Brad Richards and Johan Holmqvist to the Dallas Stars for goaltender Mike Smith and forwards Jussi Jokinen and Jeff Halpern. Smith has been excellent of late with a .938 save percentage and 1.67 goals against average in his last three games, all wins by the way, and a .906/2.46 line with a 12-9-0 record for the season. Jokinen, a 24 year old forward, has 28 points to include 14 goals and Halpern, a 31 year old forward, has 24 points to include 10 goals on the season. My initial reaction to this is the Bolts should have gotten more defense, especially when you think we’ve now traded Vinny Prospal, Brad Richards and Johan Holmqvist and have received a backup goalie and a minor league defenseman. That’s not enough to me. We have to wait and see how everyone projects and gels on our team here but we now have a potential number one goaltender taking over for the third straight season. That’s got to be a little unsettling for the team. As I previously mentioned I don’t think the goaltenders we’ve had over the last two seasons have been as big a problem as the defense itself. We’ll have to see how Smith plays in front of this defense before we judge here but I think we could’ve gotten a little better returns for the guys we’ve lost.

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