As the calendar flips to March, change is in the air for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Two of the Bolts' most important- and most popular- players from their back-to-back Eastern Conference Final appearances now wear different color sweaters.

Ben Bishop is now a Los Angeles King.

Brian Boyle is a Toronto Maple Leaf.

But the Bolts aren't waving the white flag just yet.

“You know, it’s tough this time of year,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said.  “But as pros, you’ve got to push it aside.  Everybody’s talking, ‘are you buyers or sellers’?  And as I’ve told you before, I don’t believe in any of that.  We’re trying to make the playoffs.  And we’re not changing what we want to do.  And it’s put the best team on the ice as possible to get into the playoffs.”

On paper, those playoff hopes look less likely now.

But don’t tell that to the Lightning players.

While the trades weren’t easy to swallow, this veteran group is ready to move forward and get hot at the right time.

“Everybody understands it’s just part of a business,” forward Nikita Kucherov said.  “Sometimes you go through it.  And for us, we’ve just got to continue to play our game.”

“For most of us, we’ve been through this,” forward Alex Killorn said.  “It’s stuff we’ve dealt with before.  It’s always tough when you lose not just a teammate, but a guy who’s a good friend.  But you realize that these are things that happen.”

With Bishop and Boyle about to hit free agency, and 22-year-old Andrei Vasilevskiy emerging in net, general manager Steve Yzerman felt he had to pull the trigger.

And when Yzerman looks out on the ice, he still sees a playoff team.

“My message to the locker room is:  guys, you’re doing everything you can to win,” Yzerman said.  “Every night, you’re going out.  You’ve got a lot of reasons to play: personal reasons and team reasons.  And they’re professionals, and they’ll continue to do that.”

Yzerman’s players are embracing that attitude, and they have a sense of urgency.

“(It's) probably the first year that I’ve been here that you’re not in the top of the standings or any of that stuff,” forward Jonathan Drouin said.  “Every game matters.  We need points.”

And they need their goalie of the future  to be a force in the present.