TAMPA BAY RAISES CUP
Lightning win Game 5
It was a few days ago when Jon Cooper was asked what winning a second straight Stanley Cup would mean for a team that spent so long trying — and failing — to win just one.
According to the Tampa
Bay Lightning head coach, “it becomes like a legacy thing.”
Win once and you are forever remembered as a champion.
Win twice and you move into legendary status. Win twice in a row and you may as well start preparing your Hockey Hall of Fame speech.
“You talk about some of the great teams in a decade span, and you hope the Tampa Bay Lightning would be mentioned in that,” Cooper said. “You sit back and say, `Look what Chicago did, they won three in six (years). And look what L.A. did, and look what Pittsburgh did. Multiple Cups, it's street cred for the guys, ... it shows what ownership and management and everyone all the way down and all the hard work they do, and their values are paying off.”
Following a 1-0 win against the Montreal Canadiens in
Game 5, in which rookie Ross Colton scored his first goal of the playoffs and Andrei Vasilevskiy earned his fifth shutout, you can now officially add Tampa Bay's name to that list.
It turns out that lightning can indeed strike twice. With the number of star players expected back on this modern-day dynasty, don't be surprised if it strikes for a third time.
That's how dominant the Lightning have been these past several years. In 2018-19, they tied the NHL record for wins in a season. Last year, they lost just six games in the bubble to win the COVID — er, Stanley — Cup. After defeating the Habs in five games, they did it again to cement their spot among some of the best teams of all time.
In the end, Montreal could not complete the comeback. That the Habs even managed to win once seemed like a major accomplishment. Really, they never had a chance.
With Tampa having a payroll that exceeded the limits of the salary cap by $18-million or so, no one did.
Tampa Bay, which beat Florida in six games, Carolina in five games, and the New York Islanders in seven games, won the first three games of the final by a combined score of 14-5, before granting their mayor's wishes and dropping Game 4 so they could come back and win on home ice.
“It's a great achievement ... an amazing accomplishment, that's for sure,” Lightning forward Patrick Maroon, who won for the third straight year, having been a part of St. Louis' championship team in 2019, had previously said. “It's exciting, though, to be talked about like that ... I just think how we come together as a team. We all want the same goal. We all play for each other, we play for the guy beside each other.”
Tampa Bay had it all: goal-scoring, goaltending, and a defence that was the envy of the league. The Lightning had the top five scorers in these playoffs, with Nikita Kucherov leading with 32 points and Brayden Point leading with 14 goals. They also had a goalie in Vasilevskiy who allowed just eight goals in the final and improved to 15-0 in playoff games following a loss over the past two years.
The scariest part of it is, all of them are coming back.
At times, it wasn't fair. It certainly didn't seem that way to Montreal, which came away looking overwhelmed and overmatched. What they should not have felt was embarrassed.
The Canadiens made it farther than anyone expected or believed possible. They had been a team of destiny, having come back from the dead in a first-round series to Toronto, before sweeping Winnipeg and upsetting Vegas to reach the final for the first time since 1993. That they couldn't pull off the fairy tale ending was more a result of their opponent than their own play.
Tampa Bay was simply too good, too deep and too determined.
More than that, they were just too darn methodical.
The Lightning blew out the Canadiens 5-1 in Game 1, relied on their goaltending to win 3-1 in Game 2, and then overpowered the Habs 6-3 in Game 3, before a 3-2 overtime loss in Game.
Game 5, which Tampa Bay's mayor had wanted so that the team could win on home ice, was more of a grind than a victory lap.
After a scoreless first period and a combined five power play opportunities, rookie Ross Colton finally gave Tampa Bay a 1-0 lead with 6:33 remaining in the second period after redirecting a pass in front from defenceman David Savard — two players who were not part of last year's championship team.
“They're cheering for him. There's no doubt about that,” Cooper said of Savard, who was acquired from Columbus at the trade deadline. “When you're with a group where pretty much everybody on the team has a ring from last year, I think you kind of feel a little bit left out. I know guys are pulling for him. He's really been great for us. He's a popular guy in the room and so players are naturally pulling for guys like that to enjoy the success that we had last year.”
That was all Tampa Bay needed, as Vasilevskiy shut the door in a game that the Lightning controlled.
Might as well get used to it. It's been like that for a while now.