Stanley Cup Winner Tampa Bay Lightning: All doubts cleared

Jon Cooper ponders for a moment, then started to answer. He paused, thought again, then he said: No, he really couldn’t remember a moment, a game, an incident that had a special impact on this season: “I can’t think of anything now either “said the Tampa Bay Lightning head coach after his team successfully defended their NHL title. That sounds boring, of course, because nowadays you always need a gripping story; with it is Cooper’s reaction to the story: No, there is no hero, no saga, no maudlin experience. Tampa Bay won the title because they were simply the best team of the season. “Undisputed” as they say in the USA.

This is a departure from winning the title last season, when Cooper had sounded completely different: “You need a feeling of failure to be successful as a group. You wear wounds as trophies, and at some point the fear of losing and the unite The desire to win with a feeling that carries you through the entire playoffs. ” Tampa Bay had finished the previous season as by far the most successful team in the main round – and was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs without a single win. So there it was, that embarrassing moment that made every single player work a little harder, brought the team together and made captain Steven Stamkos’ playoff injury a solvable puzzle. The coaches let Cooper change tactics from full attack to controlled offensive. Which allowed the team to dominate the playoffs in the “bubbles” of Edmonton and Toronto, which were modified due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our players can do it, they are prepared for it.” You couldn’t describe a title much more soberly

Tampa Bay were the best team back then, but there were a few doubts about the playoff structure and schedules. “Bubble Guppies” mocked fans of other clubs, alluding to the fact that these little fish cannot survive outside a goldfish bowl – the Los Angeles Lakers, champions of the 2020 basketball bubble season, for example, failed in the first round this year. “It was a turbulent ride, but not a roller coaster. It’s all the result of two years of hard work,” said Cooper. “Of course there were these games like the decisive game in the semifinals against the New York Islanders (Tampa Bay won 2: 1 after extra time, editor’s note), but here too I have to say: Our players can do it, they are prepared for it. ” You couldn’t describe a title much more soberly.

In the NHL it wins the title much less often than in the other North American sports leagues NBA (basketball) and MLB (baseball), which has been statistically proven to be the most successful team in the main round. This is also due to the fact that ice hockey is more focused on the Matchup arrives; So whether one of the opponents is up or not, and in the playoffs it doesn’t go against every club (it didn’t this season either, the league was divided into regional divisions because of Corona, which only played among each other), but against this one Opponents up to seven times. What exactly happened there was shown by the defeated Canadiens on their way to the final series: In the regular season they had only played against the other six Canadian teams and in the first two rounds against the two teams in the division, whose style of play really didn’t depend on the snappy and patient Canadiens. Semi-final against the Vegas Golden Knight, who also didn’t get along with Montréal. Schwupp: Stanley Cup Finals.

But an annoying style of play and self-confidence are of little help against a team that is not only better, but also knows it and wants to show it. If you want to know how this final series went, you should search the internet for videos with the title “Lightning Power Play Stanley Cup”. You can see how efficiently this team reaches the opposing third of the game, how precisely they fit the puck there, how blindly they understand each other so that they do not become nervous or even nervous for a second. You know: At some point, there comes the moment when it fits – like the only goal in the last game of this season, which fell on the ice with a tie: Puck win in the opposing third, pass back, pass to the side, pass in front of Canadiens’ housing -Goalkeeper Carey Price: Goal Ross Colton, who pushes David Savard’s cross over the line from less than a meter away. It certainly helped that they had one of the best goalkeepers in Andrei Wassilewski.

The doubts have been resolved, Lightning has defended the title as only the second NHL team in this millennium after the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016/17. They are not “bubble guppies”, but the undisputed best team this season.