Lightning champs of bubble hockey
EDMONTON, Alberta — The joyful yells from the bench could be heard in the empty arena in the final seconds, and the roar from players when Commissioner Gary Bettman called for Steven Stamkos to accept the Stanley Cup echoed even louder.
The triumph of winning the NHL championship in a bubble was certainly no less sweet for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Brayden Point scored his playoffbest 14th goal and the Lightning beat the Dallas Stars 20 on Monday night to win finish off the most unusual NHL postseason in history, staged nearly entirely in quarantine because of the pandemic. The clock hitting zeros with no fans in attendance set off a celebration for a team that endured years of playoff heartbreak and two months in isolation.
“It takes a lot to be in a bubble for 80 days or whatever long it was,” said defenseman Victor Hedman, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. “But it’s all worth it now; we’re coming home with the Cup.”
Before giving the trophy to Hedman, Bettman gave all the players credit for enduring a quarantine largely on their own for so long.
“To be in this place at this time under these circumstances is remarkable and frankly overwhelming,” Bettman said. “Frankly, all of the players who participated should feel like MVPs.”
Goals from Point and Blake Coleman and a 22save shutout by Andrei Vasilevskiy in Game 6 were enough to power the Lightning to their second championship after winning it in 2004. That also came with the league on the verge of a labor stoppage, a lockout that wiped out an entire season, and similar uncertainty hangs in the air now because of the coronavirus.
Tampa Bay’s core group closed out the final with an almost poetic display of what got the Lightning to this point over the past several years and months. Point’s goal came with assists from longtime standouts Nikita Kucherov and Hedman, key addition Coleman scored on an oddman rush in the second and Vasilevskiy did his job on a relatively slow night in net.
It was more of a coronation than a challenge as the dominant Lightning outshot the Stars 2922 and looked like the powerhouse they’ve been for much of the past decade.
“The beauty of our team is everyone was chipping in,” Point said. “We got contributions from anyone and everyone at different times, and that’s what makes this win so special.“