Colorado Avalanche plays the Tampa Bay Lightning for the 2022 Stanley Cup.
Credit: © Dirk Shadd, Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA Press/Alamy Images

The Colorado Avalanche defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 2 to 1 on Sunday, winning the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Finals, the National Hockey League’s championship, four games to two. They overcame a controversial penalty call in Game 5 and a 1-0 deficit early in Game 6 to secure the team’s first Stanley Cup victory since 2001.

Twenty-three-year-old defenseman Cale Makar was unanimously selected as the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player in the playoffs. He racked up 8 goals and 21 assists during the playoffs. Veteran center Nathan MacKinnon accrued 13 goals and 11 assists during the playoffs. 

After a solid regular season, journeyman goaltender Darcy Kuemper had a mixed performance in the playoffs including a Game 3 Finals loss in which he gave up five goals on 22 shots. Kuemper stepped up Game 6, however, blocking 22 out of 23 Tampa Bay shots on goal. 

The Avs denied the Lightning a chance at a third consecutive Stanley Cup win. The Lightning were trying to win three in a row for the first time since the New York Islanders won four consecutive Finals from 1980-1983. 

Like thunderclouds approaching a mountain overburdened with snow, the Avalanche and the Lightning seemed destined to meet in the 2022 Stanley Cup Finals. Colorado racked up 56 wins during the regular season, narrowly missing the Presidents’ Trophy for best regular-season record. The Lightning are a perennial powerhouse, having made it at least as far as the Eastern Conference Final six out of the last eight seasons.

Even the best teams rarely have an easy path through hockey’s second season, but the two teams’ road was less difficult than most. Only one playoff series the two teams participated went to seven games, when the Toronto Maple Leafs pushed the Bolts to the brink of eliminations during first round. Colorado swept an overmatched Edmonton Oilers team in the Western Conference Final. Tampa Bay defeated the New York Rangers in six games to take the Prince of Wales Trophy.  

The Colorado Avalanche underwent a painful rebuild to reach this point. They were the worst team in the league in 2016-2017 season. But general manager Joe Sakic (a Hall-of-Fame Avalanche player) stuck with rookie coach Jared Bednar and picked up Makar in the 2017 draft. Sakic then made a series of shrewd moves that slowly improved the team over the next few years. He acquired forwards Andre Burakovsky and Nazem Kadri and goalie Kuemper, among others, through trades. 

The Avalanche are poised to compete for the Cup for years to come. Few of their players are on the wrong side of 30. Time will tell if they can go back-to-back, as Tampa Bay did. But the Lightning aren’t going away, either, led by captain Steven Stamkos. Hockey fans may witness this elemental clash again in future playoffs.

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!

Ryan McDonagh of the Tampa Bay Lightning plays the puck away from Alexander Radulov of the Dallas Stars in Game 6 of the National Hockey League Stanley Cup Finals on Sept. 28, 2020, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The Lightning beat the Stars in the final 4 games to 2.
Credit: © Andy Devlin, NHLI/Getty Images

The Tampa Bay area in Florida, a region where temperatures rarely dip below 40 °F (4 °C), is home to North America’s ice hockey champions. On Sep. 28, 2020, the Tampa Bay Lightning blanked the Dallas Stars 2-0 to win the Stanley Cup. The Lightning won the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Finals four games to two after a long, strange, and grueling season. Goals from Braden Point and in-season acquisition Blake Coleman were more than enough offense for goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, who finished the series with a flourish, stopping all 22 shots he faced.

Long-time Lightning player Victor Hedman earned the Conn Smythe Trophy for the most valuable player of the playoffs. He scored 10 goals (the third-most ever scored by a defenseman in the playoffs) and 22 points over 25 playoff games.

The Lightning triumphed in the playoffs despite a limited contribution from their captain Steven Stamkos, who was injured for almost all of the playoffs. Stamkos made a brief appearance in Game 3 of the Finals, scoring a goal in less than three minutes of ice time, before his injury forced him out again.

The loss was another heartbreak for the Dallas Stars, who lost to the eventual champion St. Louis Blues in the 2019 playoffs. During the offseason, they added to their solid core by picking up Joe Pavelski and Corey Perry, who had spent long careers on the San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks, respectively. The veterans did their part, scoring the game-tying and winning goals in a heart-pounding double-overtime Game 5 to stave off elimination. The Stars backup goalie Anton Khudobin filled in admirably for injured ex-Lightning net-minder Ben Bishop, but he could not withstand Tampa Bay’s withering offense. The Lightning went a blistering 7-for-19 on the power-play in the series, while the Stars could manage only one goal in their 19 power-play chances.

Tampa Bay last won the Stanley Cup in 2004. The current core had been one of the best teams in the National Hockey League (NHL) to not win the Cup, losing to the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2015 Finals and suffering earlier playoff eliminations in 2016, 2017, and 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic ground professional hockey to a halt in 2020, as it did nearly every other aspect of life. As the virus spread through North America in March, the NHL postponed and eventually cancelled the remainder of its season. Each team had played about 70 games of their 82-game schedules.

The NHL and National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) later agreed to hold playoffs beginning Aug. 1. The NHL playoffs took place in “bubbles” similar to that employed for the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs. Players, coaches, and player-facing team personnel remained cloistered in hotels near Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta, and Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario. The games were televised, but no fans were in attendance. The bubble format was successful in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks among players and staff: the NHL reported no COVID-19 cases inside the bubbles during the nine-week playoff tournament, despite conducting more than 31,000 tests.

Because of the unplanned shortening of the regular season, the NHL added a qualifying round to the playoff structure. The teams with the fifth- through twelfth-best records in both conferences played a single five-game qualifying series. The eight winners joined the top four teams in both conferences for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which retained its usual format of four rounds of seven-game series.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly delayed the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Steven Stamkos and his team hoisted the Cup less than a week before the 2020-2021 season would have normally begun. The NHL’s Return to Play plan envisioned the next season starting as early as Dec. 1, but commissioner Gary Bettman admitted it could be pushed back to January. The bubble format, while successful for the playoffs, has been ruled out for the regular season. The NHL and NHLPA are discussing alternatives to play the season safely.