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Tampa Bay and Montreal complete a minor league deal

Tell me if you’ve heard this line this summer: Tampa Bay makes a deal to acquire someone from the Montreal Canadiens. This time around, the teams have made a minor-league trade of goaltenders as the Lightning have sent one-time prospect goalie Karri Ramo to the Canadiens in exchange for AHL all-star goalie Cedrick Desjardins.This deal works out to be rather interesting for both teams.

For Tampa Bay, they acquire yet another player that Lightning head coach Guy Boucher is familiar with and he’ll get to develop his game more in the Lightning minor leagues. The one issue there is that the Lightning are loaded with goaltending prospects at the moment. Dan Ellis and Mike Smith have the NHL jobs locked down and they have Dustin Tokarski and Jaroslav Janus ready to go in the minors as well. Throwing Desjardins into the mix means that one of Tokarski, Janus or Desjardins will be playing for the Lightning’s new ECHL affiliate, the Florida Everblades. At least they’ll be playing nearby.

For Montreal, they gain a guy who once had top prospect status with the Lightning in Karri Ramo. Ramo spent last year playing for Jaromir Jagr’s KHL team Avangard Omsk. While you’d like to think that Ramo getting a new change of scenery might bring him back from Russia, earlier this summer he stated that he was going to play out his two-year contract with Omsk.

Ramo’s agent, Mark Gandler, said Friday that his client could have opted out of the second year of his two-year contract, but decided in early May to stay. Tampa Bay was between general managers at the time. Gandler declined comment when asked if that affected the process.

Ramo, 24, was 21-17-4 in 44 games for Omsk with a 2.11 goals-against average, a .913 save percentage and four shutouts. Gandler said Ramo, who still is Lightning property, would like to return to Tampa Bay after his stint in Russia.

“If the stars align, we’ll get it done.” Gandler said.

Whether this trade changes Ramo’s mind to come back sooner than he expected remains to be seen and I’m sure we’ll hear more about this soon given how Montreal might want to have him close at hand should Carey Price struggle or Alex Auld get hurt. Ideally for Ramo, this deal frees him up to be the next in line for the Habs. We’ll see how committed to Russia he is or if the Habs have another trick up their sleeve.