Maroon injects Bolts with fresh shot of confidence
Big winger looks to recapture magic from Blues’ Cup run
Patrick Maroon was sitting in the visitor’s dressing room at Scotiabank Arena and playing with the teal-coloured bracelet — the one that has “LAILA STRONG” written in big, block letters — dangling around his left wrist.
It’s a reminder of his time in St. Louis, and of a little girl whose courage and strength became a rallying cry for a team whose season was on the ropes, but miraculously went on to win the Stanley Cup. It’s a reminder of everything that went right in a year that started so wrong.
For the Tampa Bay Lightning, it was the opposite. Which makes Maroon’s presence in the dressing room somewhat awkward. After all, the thing that ultimately got him a contract with the Lightning is the one thing he can’t really talk about it.
“I don’t want to come here and say, ‘Yeah, we won a Stanley Cup,’” said Maroon. “That’s rubbing it in people’s faces.”
None of his new teammates want to hear about how he won a championship last season. Not yet, anyway. The wounds from Tampa Bay’s first-round exit are still too fresh.
So don’t expect Maroon to wear his golf ball-sized championship ring around his new teammates. The bracelet is different. While it’s yet another reminder, it’s less about how the Blues won the Cup and more about why they won. That’s something Maroon hopes to impart to a Tampa Bay team that began this season in need of direction.
“My job is to come in here and try to lead by example and actually talk about how we got there and what it took to get there and what we need to do to get better as a hockey club,” said Maroon. “That’s what I want to bring … they’ve been searching for that.”
Once again, the Lightning entered this season as the Stanley Cup favourite. At the same time, this is a team that is still searching for answers. No one has yet to make sense of what happened last year, when Tampa Bay set all kinds of records in the regular season and then was promptly swept in the first round of the playoffs.
Were they too confident, too cocky? Too small to handle the meat grinder of the post-season? Did they lack leadership? Experience? Was it all between the ears?
No one knows for sure. All that matters is that Tampa Bay doesn’t go down the same road again. That’s where Maroon comes in.
How St. Louis went from last in the standings at the beginning of January to hoisting the Cup in mid-june didn’t happen overnight. There were dark days. There was internal questioning. But there was also an epiphany that, if the players stuck to the system and had each other’s backs, they would eventually find success.
It’s a lesson he’s hoping the Lightning can learn from.
“The past is in the past,” said Maroon. “It was shocking for probably the whole hockey world, them losing. But as a team right now, we’re all feeling it. I’m feeling it because you guys keep bringing it up. It’s over. I mean, it’s over and done with. ”
Maroon isn’t necessarily the answer to Tampa Bay’s problems. But when the 31-year-old was still out of a job in late August, it seemed like a no-brainer to give him a one-year deal worth $900,000.
As head coach Jon Cooper said, “I don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to have guys who have won on your team.
“Pat’s not 21 anymore. He’s been around the league and he’s got a voice. And it’s a voice that carries a heavy weight because of the ring he wears on his finger.” Yet, he’s more than just a voice. The six-foot-two, 236-pound winger, who scored the double-ot winner in Game 7 of the Blues’ Western Conference semifinal versus Dallas, adds size to a lineup that got pushed around by the Columbus Blue Jackets. He’s a power forward in the classic sense, someone who isn’t afraid to dish out hits or plant himself in front of the net.
Maroon probably won’t score 27 goals again, as he did as Connor Mcdavid’s winger in 2016-17. He might not even hit double digits. But that’s fine. Tampa Bay has all the offence it needs.
What they don’t have right now is something Maroon has in ample supply: swagger.