OTTAWA – After a few days of hinting that changes might be coming to Tampa Bay’s roster, the Lightning made a change on Thursday calling up LW/C Ryan Craig from the minors. Whether he sees time tonight against the Senators or not remains to be seen.

Craig was put on re-call waivers on Wednesday, which allowed any of the other 29 teams to place a claim on Craig for half of his remaining salary. After he cleared at noon on Thursday, he officially joined the team, although coach Rick Tocchet said no decision had been made following Thursday’s morning skate on whether Craig would make his season debut.

In order to make room on the roster the team placed D Paul Ranger, who has been granted an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons, on an unspecified reserve list similar to injured reserve. That move was made retroactive to Oct. 22 when he was first scratched from the lineup. There is no timetable on when, or if, Ranger will return to the team.

Craig, meanwhile, returns to the NHL after a month stint with Norfolk in the American Hockey League where he was leading the Admirals with seven goals and nine points through eight games. The native of Abbortsford, British Columbia, has appeared in 181 games with Tampa Bay since being called up during the 2005-06 season registering 32 goals and 63 points.

“I’m just excited to be back here,’’ Craig said. “Hopefully I’ll get a chance to play and go from there.’’

Tampa Bay had been carrying 12 forwards since the start of the season, which means there were no extras to put into the lineup if the coaching staff felt a change needed to be made.

“It’s always nice to have that extra forward around,’’ Tocchet said.

POWER PLAY WOES: The Lightning enter tonight’s game at Ottawa on a 3-for-31 slide on the power play in the past eight games. After starting off the season scoring a power play goal in five consecutive games, the man advantage has become stale.

In Tuesday’s win at Toronto, veteran D Mattias Ohlund was on the first power play unit while C Steven Stamkos moved more to the left side of the ice rather than hanging around the middle slot area where he has scored most of his five power play markers this season.

“Just a little tweak here and there,’’ Tocchet said. “There’s always something where you can put a veteran like Mattias out there, and he was having a good game. But (rookie Victor Hedman) will still get some time there as well.’’

OLYMPIC TALK: With Tampa Bay making a three-game swing through Canada this week, the topic of C Vinny Lecavalier’s status for the Canadian Olympic has come up on numerous occasions given Lecavalier’s slow start to the season with two goals in 13 games. He was asked about it again by the media in Ottawa on Thursday and will no doubt field similar questions when the team arrives in Lecavalier’s native Montreal for Saturday’s game at Bell Centre.

“Well, it’s very important for me (to be on the Olympic team),’’ he said. “The good thing for me is that they are picking the team on December 31 so that gives me two months, or six weeks, to be able to show them I deserve to be considered for the team.’’