PARALLEL PATHS
Lightning need to win Stanley Cup to truly resemble the Blackhawks.
Right after his Chicago Blackhawks had blitzed the Minnesota Wild in four games in the second round of these playoffs, Joel Quenneville was asked about the making of a powerhouse. How did they get to the point where a conference finals was almost a matter of routine?
The coach said he was lucky to come to Chicago right when the team was ready to take off. And he said a tough post-season loss to Detroit in 2009, his first year, hardened his team. “There was a lot to learn during that playoff run,” Quenneville said.
On Tuesday, a few days after his Tampa Bay Lightning outlasted the New York Rangers to make the Stanley Cup Final, Jon Cooper also spoke about lessons learned.
“Last year, in mid-April, we were feeling really, really good about ourselves,” said the coach of entering a series that ended in a four-game loss to Montreal. “And then, six days later, not so good.”
The Lightning found out something about themselves, Cooper said about that 2014 sweep. They have kept finding out more about themselves this season: going down 3-2 to Detroit before winning that series in seven games; going up 3-0 over Montreal before wobbling to victory; blowing a chance to eliminate New York at home in the East final before clinching a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden.
“It gives your coach an ulcer when they are doing it, but ultimately they find a way,” Cooper said. “Every time there’s been that little bit of adversity, we feel like we’re down and out, they come back with a knock-out punch. But that started [after the Montreal ser- ies last year] and the attitude has not changed.”
The Blackhawks turned their 2009 loss into the jumping-off point of something approaching a dynasty: five conference finals in seven years, two Stanley Cups and a shot at a third. “Obviously the 2010 season was when we finally broke through,” said Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman on Tuesday. “Those players were the ones that really made this thing go. When you get a group like that together, young players that show they can win, that’s what you need in this day and age.”
The Lightning just have that one more step for their breakthrough. If they win, the parallels to the Blackhawks of five years ago will be that much more obvious: Steven Stamkos in the Jonathan Toews role, Victor Hedman as Duncan Keith, Tyler Johnson doing his bit as Patrick Kane. It would be hard not to see Tampa as a dominant force in the East for years to come.
But first, they have to win. And it is these Blackhawks standing in their way. Kane, for one, thinks the comparison is valid.
“I could remember in 2010 we were pretty young too,” Kane said, “and I think I made a comment back then saying we were kind of too young and stupid to even realize the magnitude of the situation we were in. So that could go for them, too.”
This is the thing about winning: no one considers you a winner until you have won. The 2010 Blackhawks were young and talented, but relatively inexperienced, and then, boom, champions. They were unproven and battlescarred, and then they found out they were clutch.
“It’s possibly the most elusive trait to pin down,” Bowman said Tuesday of that ability to perform in pressure situations. “I think when you look around the league this year, you see how close these games are, really a lot of times it comes down to just a couple moments within a game,” he said.
“You notice the players that are able to come through in those pressure moments. They’re the ones that can really make a big difference.”
This is not a subject about which there is universal agreement around the league, particularly from the corner of those who make their bones by studying the data: a good bounce here, a deflection off a skate there, and suddenly a team’s fortune is reversed. With the wafer-thin margins of victory in the playoffs, clutch can sometimes be spelled L-U-C-K.
Bowman, though, doesn’t buy that. He’s a believer in clutch.
“I’m not quite sure how to explain it or describe it,” he says. “They just have ‘it.’ Fortunately we’ve got a number of guys that can do that. They can raise their game in those critical moments. We’re fortunate to have them on our side, that’s for sure.”
Tampa, it would seem, is not lacking for those guys either. The comeback against Detroit, followed by series wins over the consensus best two goaltenders on the planet in Carey Price and Henrik Lundqvist, does a lot for a team’s clutch bona fides. Ben Bishop, a playoff rookie until two months ago, now has two Game 7 shutouts to his credit: pretty clutch.
“I think so far we have done a pretty good job of stepping up to the challenge,” Bishop said Tuesday. The Blackhawks, he said, “have definitely been there and done that.”
These Lightning can now say that they have been there. All that’s left is to do that.