Lightning Vs. Avalanche Is A Heavyweight Matchup For The 2022 Stanley Cup Final

It doesn’t get much better than this.

The best regular-season team from the NHL’s Western Conference will attempt to dethrone a championship squad on an historic run in the 2022 Stanley Cup Final. It all begins at Ball Arena in Denver on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET).

The Champions

After eliminating the New York Rangers in six games on Saturday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning are now winners of their last 11 playoff series. They’re the first team to play in three straight Stanley Cup Finals since Wayne Gretzky’s 1983-85 Edmonton Oilers. And if they finish the job, they’ll be the first team to win three straight Cups since the 1980-83 New York Islanders logged four consecutive wins.

Since the NHL introduced its hard salary cap in 2005, it has become all-but-impossible for franchises to reach dynasty status. The Chicago Blackhawks managed three championships in six years — 2010, 2013 and 2015 — and the Los Angeles Kings won in 2012 and 2014. But the 2016 and 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins were the only team that went back-to-back before the Lightning did it in 2020 and 2021.

Pittsburgh’s run ended at nine series wins. They were stopped in the second round in 2018 by that year’s eventual champions, the Washington Capitals.

To keep his roster strong, Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois has been ruthless in his management of the salary cap. In the 2020-21 season, Nikita Kucherov and his $9.5 million cap hit spent the entire regular season on long-term injured reserve following hip surgery. He then returned for Game 1 of the playoffs and finished with 32 points in 23 games, leading all players in the postseason.

Kucherov missed another 32 regular-season games with a lower-body issue in 2021-22, while BriseBois cut even deeper. He was forced to say goodbye to his entire third line — free agents Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow, who had both made a significant impact after they were acquired at the 2020 trade deadline, and homegrown two-way center Yanni Gourde, who was selected by the Seattle Kraken in their expansion draft.

This season, BriseBois filled out his forward group with inexpensive veterans Corey Perry and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who were willing to take less money for a chance at winning a championship. For the last two seasons, Perry had watched the Lightning work their magic from the losing side, with the Dallas Stars in 2020 and the Montreal Canadiens in 2021. Bellemare will be up against his old team in the final, having spent his two previous seasons with the Colorado Avalanche.

Back to the 82-game grind for the first time in three years, the Lightning appeared to languish late in the season, stumbling through a pair of uncharacteristic three-game losing streaks in March. Once again, BriseBois went to the well at the trade deadline, acquiring inexpensive forward depth in speedy Nicholas Paul and energetic Brandon Hagel.

Tampa Bay finished out the regular season with 110 points — good for third place in the Atlantic Division and eighth overall in the NHL standings. The Lightning have opened all three of their playoff series this year on the road, taking down the fourth-ranked Toronto Maple Leafs in seven games before sweeping the league’s best regular-season team, the Florida Panthers, then getting the best of the Rangers and their elite goaltender, Igor Shesterkin.

True to his reputation, Lightning goalkeeper Andrei Vasilevskiy has been lights-out in high pressure situations, especially elimination games.

The reigning Conn Smythe Trophy holder as playoff MVP, Vasilevskiy has logged every playoff minute in net for the Lightning over the last three seasons. He comes into the final with a 12-5 record, a 2.27 goals-against average and a .928 save percentage.

The Lightning have gotten through their last two series without one of their top forwards. Center Brayden Point suffered a lower-body injury in Game 7 against Toronto. Second only to Kucherov in scoring by a Lightning player over these last three playoffs, Point has been on the ice, skating, and seems likely to return at some point in the Final.

The Challengers

After three straight years of second-round defeats, the exciting Colorado Avalanche have returned to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since their current general manager, Joe Sakic, hoisted the trophy as team captain in 2001.

The high-octane Avalanche have gone full throttle in the postseason, averaging a playoff high 4.64 goals scored per game and having lost just two games through their first three rounds.

Building his case for the Conn Smythe Trophy — 23-year-old Cale Makar. After making his NHL debut in the 2019 postseason, Makar is already up to 49 games of playoff experience. This year, he leads his team with 22 postseason points. Last week, he became the first defenseman in NHL history to score five points in a potential series-clinching game when the Avalanche defeated the Edmonton Oilers 6-5 in overtime in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final.

While Makar has been the constant, the Avs have benefitted from scoring throughout their lineup — four-line depth which makes them tough to contain. But despite coming into the Stanley Cup Final with three fewer games played than the Lightning, Colorado has battled some injury issues.

Starting goaltender Darcy Kuemper played just 27:19 of Game 1 against Edmonton before pulling himself with an upper-body injury. He did back up Pavel Francouz in Game 4 and is expected to be able to play on Wednesday — but will coach Jared Bednar hand the reins back to Kuemper? In his six postseason games played, including three in Colorado’s first-round sweep of the Nashville Predators, Francouz is now 6-0.

After a stellar year in which he posted a personal-best 87 points, impending free agent Nazem Kadri had 14 points in 13 playoff games and had stayed away from the bad behaviour that had gotten him suspended in three previous postseasons. Early in Game 3 against Edmonton on June 4, he suffered a broken thumb on a hit into the boards that earned Evander Kane a one-game suspension of his own.

Andrew Cogliano, one of the NHL’s most durable Ironmen, left Game 4 against Edmonton, also with a hand injury. According to coach Jared Bednar, both Kadri and Cogliano have already had surgery, are skating without sticks, and could be available during the final.

One player who will not return is defenseman Samuel Girard, who suffered a broken sternum off a hard hit during Game 3 of Colorado’s second-round series against the St. Louis Blues.

Coach of the Year?

Despite all their success, the Lightning and the Avalanche share a common trait: neither Tampa Bay bench boss Jon Cooper nor Colorado’s Jared Bednar has ever won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year.

Both Cooper and Bednar are still in their first NHL jobs. They were both promoted after success in the minor leagues and are among the league’s longest-tenured current coaches.

Cooper has been with the Lightning since March 15, 2013. In addition to Tampa Bay’s two league titles, the squad also reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2015 and two additional Eastern Conference Finals. Before joining the Lightning, Cooper won championships in the NAHL (2007/2008), the USHL (2010) and the AHL (2012).

Bednar was tapped to lead the Avalanche on August 25, 2016 after Patrick Roy resigned his position two weeks earlier, barely a month before training camp.

Previously, Bednar had won championships in the ECHL (2009) and AHL (2016), where he coached the farm team of the Columbus Blue Jackets. With almost no runway before his first season, Bednar’s Avs finished dead last in the standings in 2016-17. And while they lost the draft lottery and ended up moving down three places, it all worked out; they used that fourth overall pick to select Makar and have since made five straight playoff appearances.

Head To Head

In the regular season, the Avalanche won both meetings between these two teams. At Amalie Arena in Tampa on October 23, 2021, Makar scored the shootout winner for a 4-3 Colorado victory. Back at Ball Arena on Feb. 10, 2022, Valeri Nichushkin had the dagger in a 3-2 win.

Colorado is 5-2 on home ice in the playoffs, and a perfect 7-0 on the road. Tampa Bay is 5-4 on the road, but 7-1 at home.