It was built in that it was going to be historic. The Tampa Bay Lightning made sure it wasn’t also going to end up classic as well.
The 128-point President’s Trophy-winning team of 2018-19 that was swept in their first-round series with Columbus last year, Tampa Bay made sure — on the 65th night in the bubble, just short of 365 days since the 2019-20 regular season started on Oct. 2 — that they didn’t have to try winning Game 7 in a Stanley Cup Final.
That could have done it. That might have made it a classic.
But Tampa’s mentally tougher team, brought together by bonding in the bubble, defeated the Dallas Stars 2-0 in Game 6 to go 7-0 in games following a loss and win the unique 24-team coronavirus pandemic playoffs.
The Lightning did not lose two consecutive games at any point of the playoffs.
Considering their playoff pratfall the year before, those might be the most meaningful stats of all.
The total transition of Jon Cooper’s team from a lowercase version of the Oilers Miracle On Manchester ‘weak-kneed-wimps’ of the early ’80s to become Stanley Cup champions could perhaps be considered almost poetic in that it happened in Edmonton for this Tampa team with a similar DNA.
The two most southern teams on the NHL map were required to play this Stanley Cup Final in privacy in the league’s most northern city, and when they won it, the way they celebrated didn’t seem any different than any other year in an arena full of fans.
It looked the same as any other Stanley Cup celebration scene as they carried the Cup, passing it from player to player. But after a while, the players fished out their cell phones to skate around the ice sharing the moment with friends and family back home.
The moment was everything NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who for the first time in history didn’t get booed, hoped it would be when he and deputy commissioner Bill Daly hatched the $75-$90 million US project.
“To be in this place at this time under these circumstances is remarkable and, frankly, overwhelming,” said Bettman before presenting Victor Hedman with the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.
“It’s a testament to everybody who participated in our return to play and it’s a testament to a great Stanley Cup Final”
When it was time to present the trophy to captain Stephen Stamkos, who was only able to play five shifts and 2:47 in the playoffs, but scored an important goal in doing so, Bettman was surrounded by the entire Lighting team with the Cup on the table in front of him.
“There is no championship that is harder to win. The gauntlet that you have to run to hoist this trophy is unbelievable and never more unbelievable than this year. These guys have been away from home for more than two months. This has been the ultimate team effort. This Stanley Cup run will go down in the record books as perhaps the hardest run of all time. You guys should all be incredibly proud. This has been an amazing accomplishment.”
With that, he presented the Cup to Stamkos and the scene back to the team that had celebrated with a pile of players in the goal crease when the buzzer sounded.
Watching the Lightning just totally seal the deal without giving the Stars so much as a glimmer of hope all night in the elimination game put the exclamation mark on the transformation of the team that had put up the fourth highest total of points in the standings in the regular season, and then produced the pratfall in the playoffs.
The numbers tell the story of how worthy they were of carrying the Cup around Rogers Place this night.
The Lightning played 221 minutes and 14 seconds of overtime in these playoffs, the most ever in Stanley Cup history.
They weren’t fancy skating out there.
Tampa and Dallas combined to average 90.7 hits per game during these playoffs with 22 of the 33 combined wins by the two teams being by one goal.
It didn’t quite make it to being a classic, but there were a lot of great games and arguably more than the usual number of classic moments.
Anyway, historic will be enough.
The legend and lore of what happened in Edmonton and the other Hub City in Toronto in 2020 will grow and grow over the years until the last surviving member of the players who were involved is celebrated near the end of the century.
Count on it.
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On Twitter: @byterryjones
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
