Tampa Bay Lightning win second Stanley Cup in row, beating the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 in Game 5
It just took scoring once for the Tampa Bay Lightning to strike twice and repeat as Stanley Cup champions.
Backstopped by their star goaltender and the lone two Tampa Bay players on the ice without their name on the Cup, the Lightning won everything for the second time in under a year by beating the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Andrei Vasilevskiy had a series-ending shutout for a NHL-record fifth consecutive time dating to the 2020 last. Getting done with a small bunch in a frantic final minute, he made 22 recoveries to stay undefeated in games after a misfortune in the course of the last two end of the season games, both challenged during a lethal pandemic with the Lightning ending up as the winner each time.
Ross Colton and David Savard weren’t around last year and tried to put their stamp on Tampa Bay’s most recent title run. Savard put out up Coleman’s objective halfway during that time period past Canadiens stalwart Carey Price that started up the horde of more than 17,000 fans at Amalie Arena.
The scene couldn’t have been any further from the mirthless, void field where the Lightning won the Cup last September in an isolated air pocket across the mainland in Edmonton, Alberta. Tampa Bay joined Pittsburgh as the simply consecutive Cup victor in the compensation cap period, however much more amazingly did it in the midst of infection conventions with the most limited range between titles in the long history of the NHL.
Never losing twice in a row thanks to a combination of Vasilevskiy’s brightness and one of the deepest rosters constructed since the cap was executed in 2005, the Lightning hardened their status as a modern-day dynasty.
How profound? Nikita Kucherov had 32 focuses to join Mario Lemieux as the lone players to lead the postseason in scoring two years straight, and Brayden Point scored 14 objectives through three rounds. Kucherov, Point and defenseman Victor Hedman all played through wounds, as well.
It was simply a lot for the Canadiens, who depended again on Price to keep them in a game. He got done with 29 recoveries — one too not many to even consider forestalling a Cup celebration for Tampa Bay.
The sunbelt franchise in a nontraditional market that didn’t exist until 1992-93 went through the NHL’s most celebrated establishment to do it. The Lightning won the Cup for the third time in franchise history and denied Montreal a 25th league championship banner.
The Lightning likewise added another title for “Champa Bay,” with this title going ahead the impact points of Tom Brady driving the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl triumph in February. The Tampa Bay Rays went to the World Series the previous fall.
Tampa Bay’s civic chairman had recommended the Lightning lose Game 4 out and about so they could succeed at home, and she got her desire as mentor Jon Cooper’s group turned into the first since Chicago in 2015 to raise the Cup on home ice.
That made ready for fans to thunder in endorsement as well as for families to participate in the festival, something that was beyond the realm of imagination in the air pocket. Patrick Maroon turned into the fourth part in NHL history to win the Cup three years straight with two groups while Kucherov joined Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky as the lone players with 30 or more focuses in consecutive end of the season games.
The consecutive title run was prodded by the adversity of the team overcoming the shock of getting cleared by Columbus in the first round of the 2019 end of the season games. They gained from every misfortune after that to develop a purpose that is difficult to keep up with over as season finisher hockey causes significant damage.
The Canadiens ran running on empty in what was an in any case shock season finisher run for a group that opened the postseason with the most exceedingly terrible record of the 16 qualifiers. Montreal mobilized from a 3-1 first-round series deficiency against Toronto and disposed of Winnipeg and Vegas in arriving at the final round for the first time since winning the Cup in 1993.
