Tampa, Florida, USA. 7th July, 2021. Tampa Bay Lightning celebrate their 1-0 victory over the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup Wednesday, July 7, 2021 in Tampa. For the second year in a row the Lightning are able to hoist the coveted Stanley Cup.
Credit: © Dirk Shadd, Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Images

For the second time in a little over nine months, the Tampa Bay Lightning have won the Stanley Cup. The Lightning beat the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 on Wednesday, winning the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Finals four games to one.

The Lightning became the 17th National Hockey League (NHL) team to win two or more consecutive championships, though none have had as quick of a turnaround as Tampa Bay did. The team wrapped up their previous Stanley Cup championship on Sept. 28, 2020. That 2019-2020 season was greatly delayed and shorted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams had to compete in “bubbles” during the playoffs, isolated from everyone other than teammates and team personnel. No fans were in attendance. This year, Lightning captain Steven Stamkos and his team got to hoist the Cup on home ice in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans.

COVID-19 still loomed large over the 2020-2021 NHL season. The season began in January 2021 and was shortened to 56 games to give the Lightning and other playoff teams a short break. Several outbreaks among players forced game postponements. Border quarantine protocols kept friends and family of Lightning players from attending the fourth game of the finals in Montreal. Canadiens interim head coach Dominique Ducharme missed several playoff games due to his testing positive for the virus.

In beating the Canadiens (nicknamed the Habs), Tampa Bay goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, nicknamed the Big Cat, extended his record to five straight series-clinching shutouts, stopping all 22 shots that came his way. He earned the Conn Smythe Trophy for the most valuable player of the playoffs for his outstanding play. The Big Cat went 16-7 with five shutouts, a .937 save percentage and a 1.90 goals-against average over his 23 playoff starts.

Vasilevskiy had set the record during the semifinals, in which the New York Islanders pushed the Lightning to the brink of elimination in their quest to repeat victory. But the goalie went 18-for-18 saves in game 7 as the Lightning defeated the Islanders by a 1-0 score. The defeat was all too familiar for the Islanders, who fell to Tampa Bay in the semifinals during the 2020 playoffs.

It’s hard to lose a playoff series when you never lose back-to-back games. The Lightning are now 14-0 after a loss over the last two Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The Tampa area has dominated North American professional sports recently. Over the last year, Tampa Bay teams have won the Stanley Cup twice, the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which featured the first ever win for a team at their home city, since the Super Bowl is played at a prearranged site), and have appeared in the Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series (Tampa Bay Rays, losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers). With the region’s luck, it might be an attractive destination for a new National Basketball Association (NBA) or Major League Soccer (MLS) team!

October 3, 2017

Today, October 3, the Major League Baseball (MLB) playoffs begin with the American League (AL) Wild Card game between the Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees. The first playoff game marks the beginning of a month long Octoberfest of high-stakes baseball, culminating in the crowning of a new World Series champion. Winning the World Series is every team’s goal and every fan’s dream, but for many teams, the lack of a championship creates a haunting waiting game that can last many years, many decades, even more than century.

Dejected Cleveland Indians fans wallow in the mire of their home field loss to the Chicago Cubs in game seven of the World Series on Nov. 2, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio. Credit: © Justin Merriman, Getty Images

In 2016, the Chicago Cubs famously ended the longest waiting game of all, a championship drought that stretched back 108 years to 1908. For the Cubs’ 2016 World Series opponent, however—the Cleveland Indians—the painful wait continued. The Indians have gone longer than any other MLB team without a title. They last won the World Series 69 years ago in 1948, a win over the Boston Braves that drew an average of 80,000 fans to Cleveland’s series home games at Municipal Stadium.

The Indians—whose only other title came in 1920—returned to the World Series in 1995, 1997, and again in 2016, but fell short each time, losing to the Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, and the Cubs. The losses to the Marlins and Cubs were especially painful. Those World Series each went the seven-game distance, and each time the seventh game was decided in extra innings. For Indians players and fans, the losses were excruciating, and the only tonic to heal the wounds will come in the form of that long-awaited world title.

The Chicago Cubs ended a 108-year championship drought by defeating the Cleveland Indians in the 2016 World Series. Credit: © Matt Slocum, AP Photo

The Indians will get their chance again this year, and a good chance it is. The Indians won the most games in the American League (102), ensuring home field advantage throughout the AL playoffs. And if any team but the Los Angeles Dodgers wins the National League, the Indians—should they reach the World Series—will begin that series at home, too. (The Dodgers won an MLB-best 104 games, earning home field advantage throughout the postseason.) The Indians set an AL record during the regular season by winning a remarkable 22 games in a row from August 24 through September 14. And the team’s two biggest stars—pitcher Corey Kluber and shortstop Francisco Lindor—had terrific seasons, both while carrying the painful reminder of last year’s agonizing loss to the Cubs. (Besides losing in extra innings in game seven, the Indians blew a three-games-to-one lead in the series.)

So it is “go time” for the Indians, and anything less than a World Series championship will be a major disappointment, prolonging what is already baseball’s longest waiting game.

For curious baseball fans, the next-two longest championship droughts belong to the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros. Neither team has ever won a World Series. The Rangers entered MLB in 1961 as the Washington Senators, and the Astros began MLB life in 1962 as the Houston Colt .45′s. The Rangers, who lost the 2010 World Series to the San Francisco Giants and the 2011 series to the St. Louis Cardinals, missed out on the playoffs in 2017. But the Astros, who lost the 2005 World Series to the Chicago White Sox, won 101 games en route to an AL West division championship in 2017. The Astros, featuring such stars as José Altuve, Carlos Correa, and Justin Verlander, have an excellent chance of winning the World Series and ending one-half of the long waiting game in the state of Texas. The Astros begin a playoff series against the Boston Red Sox on Thursday, October 5.