Lightning Strike Twice
Friday, July 9th, 2021
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!