Lightning a team for the ages
In salary-cap era, dynasty territory is rare air
When it was over, in the midst of all the celebration, coach Jon Cooper said everybody knew.
Everybody knew this Tampa Bay Lightning wouldn’t and couldn’t be together anymore. This was their shot, this group, their chance, for these 23 or so players to win a second championship together.
Which in these salary-cap times is near dynasty territory. And this was — and maybe still will be — an NHL team for the ages.
Late on Wednesday night, after the Stanley Cup had been presented, I saw that Mike Bossy had tweeted congratulations to the Lightning for winning the Cup.
It struck me then — and maybe struck me before that — how similar this Lightning team is, in a different era, a different time, playing a different game, really, how similar in structure the Lightning came to be when compared with Bossy’s great New York Islanders teams.
Bossy scored 35 points in the playoffs when the Islanders won their second of four consecutive Stanley Cups in the 1980s. Nikita Kucherov scored 32 points in leading Tampa to this win.
Considering there is a goal-a-game difference between hockey in the 1980s and today’s game — a goal a game fewer — the 32 points by Kucherov, the second straight year of passing 30, is really more than the 35 that Bossy managed at the height of his career.
The great Islanders teams, which rarely get mentioned alongside the great Edmonton and Montreal teams (and they are right there with them, having won 19 playoff series in a row), probably could have not have won four straight Cups in a salary capped environment.
Tampa has two. It might be a favourite for a third.
Although the lineup we will see come October will be missing some significant pieces as the Lightning deals with having Kucherov on the cap and having to lose some bodies in free agency and one in the expansion draft.
And much like those championship Islanders teams, the depth throughout the Lightning roster was hugely important throughout the playoff run.
Yes, they have Andrei Vasilevskiy, best in the world in goal. That helps. The Islanders had Billy Smith, never best in the world, just best at playoff time.
The Lightning have Victor Hedman on defence, best in the game, no matter the Norris Trophy voters insist. He scored 18 points in the playoffs this year and 22 last year. Forty points in all. The generational Denis Potvin, top five to ever play, had 44 points in the Islanders first two Cup seasons.
Combined, Brayden Point and Kucherov had 122 points in the two Cup runs by the Lightning. Combined, the Hall of Fame combination of Bryan Trottier and Bossy scored 116 points
in fewer games played. The comparison may be a stretch. The point total is not.
And what has made the Lightning special and made the Islanders so impressive wasn’t that they were built on stars only. They were built by wise general managers, coached by the best in the business in Cooper and Al Arbour, and were three and four lines deep. When the Islanders needed one piece to change their team, Bill Torrey traded for Butch Goring. When the Lightning needed help with depth and style, Julien Brisebois went out and acquired Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman.
Goring changed the Islanders forever. Goodrow and Coleman meshed with Yanni Gourde to give the Lightning the best third line in hockey and a set-the-tone style for a team that needed a way to set the tone.
The Islanders already had that kind of depth. They had Clark Gillies who played first line and everywhere else they asked him to play. They had Bob Bourne’s speed and Bob Nystrom’s tenacity and John Tonelli’s relentless play and smarts across the board from players like Wayne Merrick and Anders Kallur and Billy Carroll and the steadiness of defenceman like Stefan Persson, Dave Langevin and Ken Morrow.
Three or four players don’t win a Stanley Cup. The whole roster wins. Teams win. Individuals, as we saw in this year’s playoffs, disappear quickly in the post-season.
Tampa built an Islanders-type depth over the years, with Ondrej Palat and Alex Killorn joining Gourde and his linemates and a Cup winning goal coming from somebody named Ross Colton.
They won with leadership if not diminished play from Steven Stamkos, defensive strength from Ryan Mcdonagh, Mikhail Sergachev and Erik Cernak: They lost Killorn for most of the final after he blocked a shot in Game 1. They lost Palat for part of Game 5 for blocking a shot.
The two championship wins in a row under the most trying of circumstances is worthy of more than applause. It is historic. This is already a team for the ages, a team Cooper talks about, using the term legacy.
Two wins now, some money to cut, and maybe with the best goalie in the world, the best defenceman in the world, the best playoff scorer in the world, there will be more titles to come.