Camp catch-up: One week to go

With just seven days until the first game of the regular season, the Tampa Bay Lightning's chase for a fourth Stanley Cup in franchise history is right around the corner. Here's the lowdown on some of the current storylines surrounding Bolts training camp.

LOOKING FOR THE LINEUP
After several transactions were made over the past week, Tampa Bay's opening night roster is starting to take shape. The Lightning training camp roster is now down to 26 players, including Anthony Cirelli and Zach Bogosian, who will both start the season on injured reserve after offseason shoulder surgeries.
Of 26 players remaining, the roster contains 15 forwards, nine defensemen and two goaltenders. The current rostered players are listed below.
Forwards: Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Anthony Cirelli, Ross Colton, Gabriel Fortier, Brandon Hagel, Alex Killorn, Cole Koepke, Nikita Kucherov, Pierre-Cedric Labrie, Pat Maroon, Vladislav Namestnikov, Nick Paul, Corey Perry, Brayden Point and Steven Stamkos.
Defensemen: Zach Bogosian, Erik Cernak, Ian Cole, Haydn Fleury, Cal Foote, Victor Hedman, Philippe Myers, Nick Perbix and Mikhail Sergachev.
Goaltenders: Brian Elliott and Andrei Vasilevskiy.
At Tuesday's practice, the Bolts continued to tweak the offensive lines, while the D-pairings remained consistent. The lines from practice are listed below.
Forwards:
Namestnikov-Stamkos-Kucherov
Hagel-Point-Killorn
Koepke-Paul-Colton
Maroon-Bellemare-Perry
Defense:
Hedman-Foote
Sergachev-Cernak
Cole-Myers
Fleury-Perbix
Fortier, who looks like he will make the opening night roster as the 13th forward, worked in with the offensive lines throughout practice. Labrie was not on the ice on Monday or Tuesday. With Cirelli set to miss the start of the season and Labrie looking likely to be heading to Syracuse, it appears Tampa Bay has 13 healthy forwards set for game one.
As for the back end, Bogosian missing the start of the year leaves the Lightning with eight remaining defensemen. I would imagine the Bolts will open the season with seven D-men on the roster and if that's the case, it looks like the battle for the seventh spot will come down to Nick Perbix and Haydn Fleury.
Fleury was drafted seventh overall by the Carolina Hurricanes in 2014 and signed a two-year deal with Tampa Bay this summer after playing with the Seattle Kraken last season. He has 215 regular season games of NHL experience under his belt and would have to go through waivers if the Bolts elected to send him to Syracuse.
Taking part in his first training camp with the Lightning, Fleury is starting to get more comfortable within the Lightning's system and structure. One thing that's stuck out to him has been the attitude and culture of the organization.
"I know I've learned more in my four weeks here than I have in a long time," Fleury explained. "I'm impressed just from watching other guys on the team, like Kuch, Stammer, Pointer and all these guys.
"You watch what they do day to day and it's just incredible. It's contagious in the sense that you want to continue to get better every day and really push yourself.
"It's a workmanlike mentality where everybody comes to work and after it's done, everybody's having a good time. The guys have been nothing but great.
"It's a real honor to me to be a part of this team and be able to come and play with these guys. I don't take that for granted."
Fleury feels that throughout his career, his skating has been one of his biggest strengths. In a system that encourages defensemen to get up ice and join the rush, he feels he can use his skating to his advantage.
"You have to come in and be ready to skate every day," Fleury said. "I think that's one of the biggest things for the D on this team. You've got to be up in the play.
"It's all about skating and I think I'm just continuing to get more comfortable and not second guess myself. There's a lot of similarities from Carolina, but there's also a lot of differences and I'm just learning every day.
"I've always been a good skater, so I think that's kind of the biggest thing is using my skating the best I can."
While Fleury brings over 200 games of experience to Tampa Bay, Perbix has yet to skate in an NHL game after making his professional debut last season with the Syracuse Crunch following his senior year at St. Cloud State University. He skated in 12 regular season games, recording an impressive eight points with two goals and six assists. He also picked up one assist in five playoff games with the Crunch.
The big, right-handed defenseman has performed well during camp and stuck with the main group throughout the process. The Bolts could elect to carry eight defensemen on the roster and Perbix being a righty allows for some flexibility, but with Fleury's experience and requirement to pass through waivers, I see him as the seventh defenseman on the opening night roster.
THE RETURN OF VLADDY
After skating in 290 regular season games between the New York Rangers, Ottawa Senators, Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings following his departure from Tampa Bay, Vladislav Namestnikov is back in Bolts blue with a one-year contract signed in July.
"The core is still together, so it was a no-brainer to come back when the opportunity came," Namestnikov said. "I'm just glad to be back."
Namestnikov is a very versatile player that can play on any of the four forward lines. He can also be an effective special teams player, both on the power play and penalty kill. He feels his game has continued to grow stronger as his time in the league has lengthened.
"I've gotten older and more mature," Namestnikov explained. "My game's more mature. I think I've learned more on the defense side with PK and stuff like that. I think I've become more of an all-around player than I was before."
Along with all of his former teammates, Namestnikov has a connection with another new addition to the Lightning in assistant coach Jeff Blashill. Namestnikov skated in 113 games with Blashill as his head coach in Detroit.
"He learned to really appreciate the defensive side of the puck and to really make sure that he does a good job with that side of the puck and understanding that if you're good defensively, that usually means more ice time," said Blashill. "Vladdy, for us over those two couple of years in Detroit, killed a lot of penalties for us. At times, he spent time on a checking line or a matchup type line.
"He can play every position up front. I've seen him play center and both wings. He can play with the high-end, skilled players because he's got a mind and an ability to be able to play with those players and he can kind of be in a checking role.
"I think that, first off, helps any hockey team. I think, second off, it helps him earn ice time. I think the fact he's developed different ways to play has been a real benefit."
Skating on the top line with Kucherov and Stamkos on Tuesday, Namestnikov is hopeful and confident that the chemistry can return quickly as the regular season approaches.
"It's fun," Namestnikov said. "They're great players, so it's kind of easy to make plays with them.
"You just have to get used to all the routes and everything. Overall, it's been good. It worked last time, so I hope the magic comes back this time."
GOING FOR THE KILL
With Derek Lalonde departing to be the new head coach in Detroit, it will be Blashill joining Rob Zettler to spearhead penalty kill duties. In terms of X's and O's, things will stay fairly similar to last season for the Bolts PK, but some departures and additions to the roster will likely require a few changes in personnel.
"We looked at some potential tweaks that would have been a little bigger, but we decided not to implement those based on the fact that this group has had a lot of success with what they've done," Blashill explained. "We're not really changing a whole bunch. I think as you go throughout a season, you tweak.
"I think they tweaked to a certain point last year and we're kind of resetting back a little bit to probably where they were more at the beginning of the year at times. It's going to be a similar look I'd say, just some different personnel obviously based on some guys that are here and some guys that aren't here."
One of those new guys stepping in will be veteran defenseman Ian Cole, who has been a reliable, consistent penalty killer throughout his career. Cole will look to make up for a lot of those blocked shots that Ryan McDonagh provided on the PK over the past several years for the Lightning.
"I think Ian has spent a lot of years in this league being a real good penalty killer," said Blashill. "Ian understands what separates him in this league. He understands what he's good at and understands what his kind of role is.
"He knows he needs to defend great. He knows he needs to help move pucks out of our end. He knows he needs to be a real good penalty killer.
"So far, he's shown real good instincts. Some of the stuff that we do is a little bit different than what he did in Carolina, so it takes a little bit of time and reps to get used to what the exact responsibilities are, but there's zero doubt that he looks like a guy who's a pretty natural penalty killer.
"For us to be a good penalty kill, we think that he'll need to be a big part of that."
TWO MORE
The Lightning will travel south and battle the Florida Panthers on Thursday before returning home for a rematch with the intrastate rival in Saturday afternoon at AMALIE Arena.
Those are the final two preseason games for Tampa Bay before the regular season kicks off on Tuesday, October 11 with a rematch of the Eastern Conference Final against the New York Rangers.