For the first time in three years, the Stanley Cup Final will not include the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Maple Leafs finally broke their first round curse and found a way to advance in the playoffs, ending the Lightning’s season in the process. It’s never an easy feeling getting knocked out of the playoffs but you have to think for Tampa, it’s a time to decompress and come back as strong as ever. No one has played more hockey than the Lightning over the last couple seasons. Between three straight trips to the cup final and the extra rounds with the COVID Cup, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the Leafs were able to beat them. You have to think that time caught up to this team and certainly led to them running out of gas, falling to the Leafs in six.
I was a bit overoptimistic for the Leafs going into the series and had them taking it in five but aside from being off by a game, my prediction stood as the Leafs finally did it. For Tampa, it’s hard to really put a label on this season. You have to think they’re probably looking at it as an underachievement considering they wanted to continue competing but realistically, this team has back to back championships, that’s never going to be taken away. All things considered, this season definitely wasn’t a failure. Not for nothing, the fact that they were able to compete as much as they did is impressive enough. I’m all for journeymen but Darren Raddysh should not be in your top-six come playoff time. That being said, injuries also played a role in the outcome of this series. They were without Erik Cernak, Victor Hedman wasn’t at full capacity, Tanner Jeannot went down with one, these are significant names that the team had to go through this series without.
The Lightning started these playoffs out on their high note, beating the Leafs in decisive fashion by a score of 7-3. All things considered, they put up a hell of a fight, took the Leafs to three different overtimes which would inevitably become the game changer in this series as the Leafs won all three of those games. They showed life in Game 5 to force the series back to Tampa but it was Captain John Tavares who sent them packing with the game winner in Game 6’s overtime. For what it’s worth, the series was much closer than most that went six, it all just comes down to the fact that Tampa ran out of gas mixed with it finally being Toronto’s time.
The biggest question for the Lightning this off-season will be centered around what this loss actually does to them. This is the first time they haven’t reached the cup final in three years so you have to wonder if this rattles them and starts to turn the tide or if it motivates them to regroup and come back ready for another run. They won’t have a ton of decisions to make in the off-season. They have five semi-significant pieces set to become unrestricted free agents in Alex Killorn, Corey Perry, Pierre-Edourd Bellemare, Ian Cole and Brian Elliott. Julien Brisebois is going to have some decisions to make there, mainly regarding Alex Killorn who has spent his entire career in the Lightning’s organization. You have to think everyone else will head to free agency as Tampa works on breeding some new talent to fill their places.
Tampa’s an organization with a great minor league system that loves to generate homegrown talent. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t count on them bringing back guys like Perry and Bellemare. This will likely be another opportunity for them to promote some guys within depending on who they go after in free agency. At the moment, without considering any guys resigning or free agent additions, they’d be looking at:
Stamkos - Point - Kucherov
Hagel - Cirelli
Jeannot - Colton - Paul
Maroon -
Hedman - Perbix
Sergachev - Cernak
Fleury - Bogosian
Raddysh
With that in mind, losing Killorn does indeed leave a hole in your lineup and you have to wonder how impactful a middle-six of role players like Nick Paul, Tanner Jeannot, Ross Colton and Branden Hagel can be. You still have a strong core in Stamkos, Point, Kucherov and Hedman. With a goalie like Vasilevskiy, you’re never going to be out of it, which is reason enough not to count the Lightning out for running it back. You do have to keep in mind that the Atlantic Division is growing stronger. I talked about it in my Elimination Eval for Boston but between the Leafs, Panthers, Bruins, Senators and Sabres, it’s not going to get much easier. Especially if Montreal lands Conor Bedard, the Atlantic could become just as dangerous as the Metropolitan Division has been in recent history.
There isn’t much else to really hyper-stress over when it comes to this team. You certainly don’t want to grow complacent just because you won back to back championships but at the same time, there isn’t a ton of pressure to tear anything down or make any massive moves. Take a look at your cap situation, do as much with what you have available in free agency, I’m sure someone will go on LTIR and they’ll make another big trade at next seasons deadline but when push comes to shove, the most important factor for this group is simply having a full off-season to regroup.
Chris Feldman
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