John Carlson
Carlson is a 36-year-old right-side defenseman who was signed to run Tampa Bay's power play, but the one line page I could read has him on the second unit, and no analyst coverage I found settles that.
Role
Daily Faceoff's Lightning line page (fetched, last updated 31 October, source Gabby Shirley) lists him on the second power-play unit, with Holmberg, Cirelli, Goncalves and Geekie. Its first unit is Guentzel, Point, Kucherov, Hagel and D'Astous. The page lists defensemen in this order: Moser, McDonagh, Carlson, D'Astous, Hedman, Crozier. I could not confirm the pair boundaries from the fetch. The Morning Puck page, indexed 9 days ago and not fetched, shows Carlson–D'Astous as a pair, with McDonagh–Moser and Cernak–Hedman ahead of them. Cernak is missing from Daily Faceoff's list and I found no reason why. An ESPN profile snippet, undated by me, shows 19:12 per game in October over 12 games and 4 goals. I did not find a penalty-kill role for him on Daily Faceoff. Treat the deployment as unconfirmed beyond the 31 October page.
Tampa Bay signed him to replace Darren Raddysh, and Daily Faceoff's signing note said he could fill the void on the top power-play unit. Early-October practice reports on gamedaytweets (undated, shown as 305 days old, so possibly last year's) had him on the top unit with Kucherov, Guentzel and Point. ESPN's snippet says he was brought in to run the power play. Our card shows him shooting at a high rate for a defenseman last season (36 SOG in 13 GP), and he has shown goal scoring this season (4 goals per the ESPN snippet).
The most recent page I read has him on the second power-play unit, with D'Astous on the first. ESPN's snippet says the Lightning power play ranks 26th in the NHL and that Carlson is on his slowest point pace since 2013-14. That snippet also had him with 6 points through his early games, and it gave no date for the figures. At 36 he is likely to get only a share of the top man-advantage time, so his production depends on even-strength minutes behind other pairs.
Where analysts split
The open question is whether Carlson or D'Astous holds the first power-play unit's defense spot. Daily Faceoff's 31 October page has D'Astous on PP1 and Carlson on PP2. The practice setups in the gamedaytweets snippet had them rotating, but those are undated and I could not tie them to this season. I found no analyst piece arguing either side, so this is a reading of line pages, not a named debate.
Research confidence: thin. Outlooks are grounded in web search over current reporting and refreshed through the season.
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