The Tampa Bay Lightning went from being on the wrong side of arguably the greatest upset in the history of sports to being back-to-back Stanley Cup Champions.
What a difference two years make.
However, this Stanley Cup win for the Lightning is one that I have not seen so heavily criticized since their first of back-to-back Cups, which they won in the bubble. The bubble was an even playing ground. Every team that went to the bubble got the same amount of rest. The Lightning had no such advantage towards their favor.
This time around, people are complaining about the fact that they were $18 million over the NHL's salary cap.
Although it may sound annoying that they gamed the system, no NHL rules say that NHL team cannot be over the salary cap come playoff time. Salary cap is turned off when the playoffs begin.
Yes, I know there are going to be people upset about this, but there has not been any team in the NHL that has done so egregiously. Not even the 2015 Chicago Blackhawks, where Patrick Kane was held out of the lineup for the rest of the season so that they can trade for key pieces for their Cup run, or last season's Toronto Maple Leafs, where they finished with a cap hit of $95M by way of the long-term injured reserve.
So, with this, we need to ask ourselves this question:
How did the Lightning Get $18M Over the Cap?
Most of the money that resulted from the Lightning being $18M over the cap was because of contracts on the LTIR.
Nikita Kucherov was on the LTIR for the entire season following his hip surgery in the offseason after the Lightning won the 2020 Stanley Cup. However, by activating him after the conclusion of the regular season and before the start of the playoffs, his $9.5M salary was not added to the cap this season.
Same thing for Steven Stamkos, who was injured during the season and was activated before the start of the playoffs after the regular season ended.
The Lightning also took on the contracts of Marian Gaborik and Anders Nilsson, who were already on the LTIR.
With this, it allowed the Lightning to trade for David Savard by the trade deadline. At the end of the regular season, they finished with a cap hit of $98M.
In a way, the argument that they circumvented the cap can be valid. But Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois did not break any rules on how he manipulated the cap.
GMs used this loophole to circumvent the cap for a long time. So, BriseBois is not the only one here. The real shame of all the cap circumvention headlines is for the Lightning accomplishing what they did in the past year. It took years of heartbreak to win Lord Stanley's finest hardware two years in a row.
They Learned from Previous Collapses, Making the Right Choices
The Lightning have had five straight years of playoff disappointments before the back-to-back Cups:
They had a 2-1 series lead in the 2015 Stanley Cup Final before getting outmatched in three straight games while having some of their players playing through injury, most notably Ben Bishop and Tyler Johnson.
They let a 3-2 series lead slip in the 2016 Eastern Conference Final after having already lost Bishop in Game 1 of the series, and had to witness the Penguins winning the first of two back-to-back Stanley Cups.
They missed the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs by one point.
After taking a 3-2 series lead in the 2018 Eastern Conference Final, they got shut out in back-to-back potential series-clinching games.
It all culminated in The Sweep in 2019.
For the last six seasons, the Stanley Cup has run through the Lightning.
But saying that the Lightning won the Stanley Cup only because they were $18M over the cap is a flat out lie. Just because you spend so much money, doesn't mean that it will guarantee you success. Take a look at the Maple Leafs. As said earlier, they finished with a cap hit of $95M last season. Yet they did not win a playoff round.
The Lightning won the Stanley Cup this season because they used said $18M to retain the core players to put themselves in a position to win. Seven of their players on this year's Stanley Cup-winning Lightning team were on the 2015 team that made it to the Final: Stamkos, Kucherov, Johnson, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Victor Hedman, Ondrej Palat, and Alex Killorn. The Lightning had one of the most experienced lineups in the league that fought through heartbreaking collapses to win it all in back to back years.
BriseBois knew that he had the pieces to put his team in a position to win it again this season, and he manipulated the rulebook to put his team in the best possible position. He made the smart moves and it paid off in the end.
But because people are wanting to bash the Lightning for being $18M over the cap, the horrible truth is that the more you win, the more your critics are going to look towards the flaws and controversy in the victories instead of the impressive stories behind them (examples: the 2020 Lightning, the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers, the 2014 New England Patriots, the 2017 Golden State Warriors, the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, and possibly this year's Phoenix Suns).
These Stanley Cup runs were no fluke.
The Lightning were faced with some of the toughest playing scenarios in sports, and these back-to-back runs should not have asterisks carried with them, but rather, send out reminders of how hard it is to build a dynasty during a pandemic.
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