Belief, Trust Help Lift Tampa Bay Lightning To Third Straight Stanley Cup Final

As the Tampa Bay Lightning have grown together, so has the level of confidence in each and every player who pulls on the jersey.

No matter if the player in question is a future hall of famer or a trade deadline acquisition previously lacking playoff experience, there is an unwavering confidence that the job will get done.

“It’s belief in ourselves and belief in the work you put in, the systems, the way the coaches prepare you as players,” said Steven Stamkos, following his team’s Eastern Conference-clinching victory over the New York Rangers, in which he scored twice in a 2-1 win. “But, trust. That’s the word. We trust every guy that goes over the boards to do his job. Whether you score a goal or not, it’s the little things that you do. It’s the defending, the blocked shots, the sacrifice, not complaining about your role. Just going out and playing as hard as you can for the next guy that sits beside you in the locker room. That’s why this group is so special.”

It is a group, led by Stamkos, Tampa Bay’s 32-year-old captain, that has won 11 consecutive series. It is a group that will be going for a third straight Stanley Cup when the puck drops on the final round in Denver starting Wednesday night.

It is such trust and belief in every guy in the room that helped propel the Lightning back from a 3-2 deficit in the first round against Toronto, a sweep of President’s Trophy-winning Florida, and four straight wins over the Rangers after opening the series in a size-two hole.

It is also about how the Lightning have been getting it done when victory is most in need. They allowed one goal in each of the last three games in the conference final. They allowed no more than one goal in each of their last nine series-clinchers, dating to the 2020 Edmonton bubble. It takes a dedicated group, from top to bottom, to make that happen.

“This group is pretty amazing, pretty special,” said Stamkos, who has nine goals this playoff year and 41 in his career. “Each guy is just part of the process and that’s what makes this team so special, tight and unique. We don’t care how it gets done, it just needs to get done.”

That wasn’t always happening. Sure, the Lightning went far on multiple occasions. However, completing the task seemed too high of hurdle to scale. They went to the Cup final in 2015, losing in six games to the Blackhawks. In the 2018 conference final, Tampa Bay bounced back from a 2-0 deficit against Washington to take a 3-2 series lead. Alas, they failed to score in losing the last two games.

Then there were years such as 2016, when they missed the postseason derby, and 2019 when, after rewriting the team’s record book during a remarkable regular season, the Lightning were swept in the opening round by a Columbus team that had not won a playoff series in its previous 17 seasons of existence.

Yet, instead of tearing down, the Lightning maintained its core and built up around it. Pieces were added in the off-season and during what have been exceptional trade deadline deals.

“This did not happen overnight,” said coach Jon Cooper, who has had nine full seasons behind the Lightning bench. “It takes time and you have to give credit to (owner) Jeff Vinik, (former GM, who hired Cooper) Steve Yzerman and (current GM) Julien BriseBois. They kept the group together believing in the long term and not just knee-jerk reactions and saying, ‘You know what, this has to blow up’ because 2019 was an easy one, an easy out. When you get knocked around and knocked down that many times and the team still comes back, you know you have something. It just took us some time.”

It took time to figure out that it is okay to win close, low-scoring games. It is okay, especially with a world-class goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy, to go about their business with a defense-first mentality. It is a style of play that leads to ample opportunities at the other end. There is no better example than how Tampa Bay went about its business in coming back against the Rangers.

“We have enough skill and talent to score offensively, but we focus on our defensive game,” said Alex Killorn, who enters the Cup round having played 128 postseason games. “If we don’t let them score and we win 2-1, we are happy with that. We don’t have to win by six goals or whatever it might be. We want to defend first, and when you defend, you end up getting a lot of scoring chances out of it. So, I am really happy with how we have progressed in that sense in this playoff run.”

While that has certainly been true in defeating the Maple Leafs, Panthers and Rangers this spring, the larger picture is that the Lightning have had an unwavering mindset since commencing their current Cup journey in the Toronto bubble during the summer of 2020. Indeed, the buy-in has been thorough and unmistakable. It is the byproduct of lessons learned and experience gained from previous failures.

The result is that Tampa Bay is the first team to appear in three straight Cup rounds since the Edmonton Oilers did so 1983 to 1985. They will attempt to become the first team to win three straight Cups since the New York Islanders, who won four straight (1980-83) with the Oilers denying a fifth in ‘84.

“I go back to us being together for a long time and there are times you go through those lumps of sitting here saying, ‘You know, you have a 1-0 or 2-0 lead, do you want to win the game 8-0 or do you want to win the game 2-1?’” said Cooper. “It took us time to figure that out. But when we did, (going to three straight Cup finals) is what’s happened.”