Will Hockey History Overlook The Tampa Bay Lightning’s Success?

The current Tampa Bay Lightning may have been the NHL’s most dominating team since the turn of the century. Three straight Stanley Cup finals appearances from 2020-2022, including two wins, plus an extra finals appearance in 2015 will land you in some elite company. Considering the complete roster and organizational turnover we won’t count the Lightning’s 2004 cup victory. Other contender for the NHL’s most successful team in that time frame are the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks with three Stanley Cups each.

We’ll consider the fact the lightning had a chance to three-peat while Pittsburgh and Chicago didn’t a tie breaker for now. Tampa Bay might have the NHL’s best “mini dynasty” of the 21st century. The problem is, will history forget them?

What will the legacy of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s 2020-2021 Stanley Cup championships be? How will history look back on some of the weirdest NHL season to ever take place?

Opposing fans always look for way to discount their rival’s success. As a die-hard New Jersey Devils fan, I’ve heard plenty of times how the Devils only won because of the neutral zone trap, that one of those cups was in a 48 game season, it was a boring era for the NHL, etc. The Lightning have a very unique set of critiques against them. Do any of them might actually have a point?

Let’s go back to that first cup championship in 2020. The weirdest NHL season ever was also the weirdest year of pretty much anyone’s life. The Lightning won a fan-less playoff played in a neutral site bubble. Those are conditions we hope never have to be repeated. That was also after the entire league hade an over four month layoff. It still ended with their names engraved on Lord Stanley’s cup.

The came cup number two. We’ve all heard the “the Lightning cheated the cap” by adding Nikita Kucherov back to the roster after the regular season, and its salary cap implications, had ended. That was also a year played without, or a limited amount of fans. By the time the Stanley Cup final rolled around, things were just starting to once again feel “normal”. It wasn’t even a full regular season by NHL standards, playing 56 games instead of the regular 82 games.

In addition to Kucherov’s cap exploits is the competition they faced. Even if their Cinderella run was fun to watch, the Montreal Canadians might be the worst team to be Stanley Cup runners up in the NHL’s salary cap era. They were gifted a trip to the NHL’s semifinals (remember, there were no “conference” finals that year) because of the unique situation of the NHL’s all Canadian division. Travel restrictions at the northern border lead to some creative scheduling that guaranteed a Canadian team a spot in the NHL’s final four.

Also working against Tampa is their results in the two season’s book ending their back to back championships. Yes, they made the 2022 Stanley Cup final, but would lose to the Colorado Avalanche in the first traditionally run cup final in three years. In 2019 they infamously got swept in the playoffs first round at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Both of those were also 82 game seasons.

The Lightning seemed to have fallen back to earth a bit, even if the NHL playoffs are in their future. The excuse “all those playoff rounds and games are catching up to them” (that’s the excuse used in this week’s “Super 16” from NHL.com) keeps getting thrown around as a possible reason. Contradicting that theory is the fact both cups were won in shortened regular seasons, so even if they were playing more playoff games they were playing much less regular season hockey.

Maybe the Lightning’s cup runs will be easy to forget because it’s an era of time we all want to forget period. It’s nice to be back to full stadiums, full schedules, and the NHL we all took for granted prior to March of that year. Unfortunately that means the Lightning’s successes are in the rear view mirror. Not to mention ratings during that timeframe where much lower than normal.

The Tampa Bay’s back to back championships might act as sort of a unique time capsule of the weirdest chapter in hockey history. Lockouts come and go, but it took almost two seasons for the league to return to business as usual. If you won the Stanley Cup and no one was there to watch it, did it really happen? Well, considering Stamkos and company got a nice shiny ring and celebrated with a fun boat parade, yes they did.

What the Lightning did was incredible. The conditions they did it in were not optimal in the slightest. If anything, that should make their accomplishments even more impressive than forgetful.