The Lightning won the Stanley Cup Final on Monday, defeating the Dallas Stars in six games in Edmonton, the hub city for the Final.
"Winning is a hard business at this level," BriseBois said. "For us to win the Cup, the players had to do a lot of hard work and the coaching staff had to make some hard decisions and now, if we want to win another Cup, it's my turn to make some hard decisions.
"My job -- my duty -- is to make decisions that increase the odds of the team being successful, and every decision I'm going to be making in the next couple of days is going to be based on trying to improve the odds that we will continue to be a Stanley Cup contender year in, year out, for the foreseeable future. And I believe that we have what it takes to be such a team."
The salary cap will remain $81.5 million for next season, and BriseBois said he expects it to be the case for the following two seasons as well. He said that prior to the coronavirus pandemic he had anticipated the cap rising to $84 million next season.
Part of the Lightning's cap issues is the significant raise due to goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, whose salary cap charge will go from $3.5 million this season to $9.5 million next season, the beginning of the eight-year, $76 million contract extension he signed July 29, 2019. Vasilevskiy, voted the Vezina Trophy winner last season as the best goalie in the NHL, was a finalist for the award this season with a 35-14-3 record, 2.56 goals-against average and .917 save percentage. He was 18-7-0 with a 1.90 GAA and .927 save percentage in the postseason.
In addition to the three restricted free agents mentioned by BriseBois, forwards Mitchell Stephens, 23, and Carter Verhaeghe, 25, each can become a restricted free agent. The Lightning also have five pending unrestricted free agents: defensemen Jan Rutta, 30; Kevin Shattenkirk, 31; Luke Schenn, 30; and Zach Bogosian, 30; and forward Pat Maroon, 32.