There is no Cinderella this year.
As the Tampa Bay Lightning go into their third straight Stanley Cup, which would make them the fourth team in league history to do so, they face the best possible challenge the West can throw at them. If you think that the 2020 bubble victory over Dallas was tainted (it wasn’t) because of the weird conditions, or that last season was an anticlimatic outcome against some outdated Montreal Canadiens, the 2022 final is the test. definitive.
Colorado is the best team Tampa Bay has faced in any of these three finals and, in fact, may be the best team to have faced Lightning at any time during those three years.
The two teams came this far in very different ways.
The Lightning have just won a six-game series against New York in which they lost the first two games. In this series, Tampa Bay started with nine days off while the Rangers arrived just after a long series of seven games over Carolina. The lightning started slow and then he discovered it.
If the break against the rust was a factor at the start of this series, he could once again play a role in the Cup final.
By the time the first game arrives, Tampa Bay will be working three days off, while Colorado will have eight days off after clearing Edmonton. The Avs had seven days off between their 1 and 2 series, then won Game 1 in overtime and were never ahead of their series against the Blues.
“It’s just part of what we’re doing and the mindset we have is to be prepared, to be prepared,” Gabriel Landeskog said. “If we have eight days off, we’ll have eight days off and make sure we train hard, get some rest and are ready to get started.”
Undoubtedly, hockey fans everywhere are ready for what, on paper, is shaping up to be the best Cup final in a few years. It is the team that is trying to succeed against the promising competitor that we have seen coming for years and that has finally reached its peak.
This is how the two finalists are grouped.
HEAD TO HEAD RECORD
Allau: 2-0-0
Lightning: 0-1-1
What’s at stake for Colorado:
In the 2016-17 season, the Avalanche had a horrible season, one of the worst in history, finished with 48 points in 82 games and then had horrible luck in the lottery, which fell to the fourth team general. Don’t worry, they caught Cale Makar there. At the start of next season, they replaced center-back Matt Duchene for a great comeback that included defender Sam Girard and a first-round pick that made Bowen Byram fourth in the overall standings in 2019. the Avs acquired half of their blue line from the top six totally healthy.
It has been a steady buildup since then. Over the following years, Devon Toews was acquired for a pair of second-round players and later became a Team Canada-type defender. Nazem Kadri was joined by Alex Kerfoot and Tyson Barrie and his impact as a 2C has been huge, with 2021-22 his best performance to date. Darcy Kuemper was the No. 1 goalkeeper this season through trade. And there have also been several solid additions “around the edges”, such as Andre Burakovsky and this year’s additions this season, Arturri Lehkonen and Josh Manson.
Meanwhile, Avalanche CEO Joe Sakic resisted the need to pay on time for older fish, such as Taylor Hall or Claude Giroux.
We’ve been seeing the Avs for a few years now, and after three straight losses in the second round, the 2022 team finally broke through and cut through the Western Conference. What is at stake now is to claim a Stanley Cup before all its star players sign expensive new contracts that will make adding margins more of a challenge.
After this season, Nathan MacKinnon will only have one more season with a $ 6.3 million limit before being eligible for unrestricted free agency and online to be one of the highest earners in the league. Kuemper and Nazem Kadri will both be UFAs this summer and at least one could be priced out of town. Makar ($ 9 million) and Mikko Rantanen ($ 9.25 million) have already secured their paydays.
It’s not like this has to be Colorado’s only crack in the Cup – they still have a loaded list and a GM who has proven to be a great asset manager, but things will start to adjust in the next season or two. The ages and contracts for this list creation are in the Goldilocks Zone right now, so it’s essential to finish the job before the off-ice considerations affect the outlook a bit.
What’s at stake for Tampa Bay:
The word “dynasty” can be used a bit easily in modern sports and that could be because we haven’t had many real historians in recent times. The New England Patriots of the NFL won three Super Bowls in four years in the early 2000s and another three in five years between 2014 and 2018 and are one of the best examples of this, although some even argue so.
In the NHL, both the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks have won three Stanley Cups in a six-year period over the past two and a half decades and are the closest to a “dynasty” we’ve had in the sport since The Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers won 14 of the 15 Stanley Cups (five for Montreal and Edmonton, four for the Islands) between 1976 and 1990.
Lightning can enter this type of stratosphere with a victory in this series.
If they can beat Colorado four times, the Lightning will be the first NHL team to win three consecutive Stanley Cups since the Islanders’ four-goal 1980-83. Since the turn of the millennium, the Penguins (2016, 2017) and the Lightning (2020, 2021) are the only two teams to have won consecutive titles.
The last teams in any of the four major North American sports to win at least three titles in a row were the NBA Lakers (2001, 2002, 2003) and the MLB New York Yankees (1998, 1999, 2000). ).
It is quite impressive that these Lightning have a shot of three mobs at an age of parity with a salary cap, and even more so if we consider that for a couple of years now we have a flat cap, which leaves even less space. to manage player increases and list rotation. Lightning CEO Julien BriseBois has done a masterful job.
The players have done the same, and it must also be acknowledged that while the last two seasons have been unusual (first a bubble playoff and then a regionalized 56-game schedule), this has also been a unique challenge for players to adapt. -se a.
A Lightning victory should secure them dynasty status in NHL history. And they will still be a force next year.
ADVANCED STATISTICS Elimination numbers 5 against 5 using Natural Stat Trick
The prospect of Colorado
The Avs ruined the Western Conference by becoming the first team to win their regular season conference title and then reach the Stanley Cup final from Chicago in 2013. Colorado only needed 14 games. playoff to reach the Cup final and became only the eighth. team since 1987 (when each playoff round became a top 7) to reach the fourth round with just two losses.
But let’s face it, only three of those teams won the Stanley Cup.
The prospect of Colorado is simply brilliant. Defender Cale Makar leads the team with 22 points in 14 games and has the best score per game of any remaining player. He hasn’t slowed down anything in the playoffs and is now generating Bobby Orr vibes with his propensity to absolutely dominate and control the flow of play anywhere on the ice.
And of course, you have Nathan MacKinnon, a one-player bull who often forgets in the conversations of the “best player in the world,” but who should be in the mix. He, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog have been the young and mature leaders of this team for a long time and are 2-3-4 in scoring up to this point, as expected.
But then there is Kadri, who has played with an advantage that has not yet passed to a penalty, which has been a worrying area for him in the past. Although he was injured in match 3 of the western final, he has not yet been ruled out for match 1 of the Cup final. Devon Toews is overshadowed by his defense teammate, but is the elite in his own right.
People, go on. Artturi Lehkonen, who sent the Avs to the Cup final with a fourth-game winner against Edmonton, is tied for the league lead with three winning goals this postseason. The late Valeri Nichushkin averages more than 20 minutes a night.
They overcame Girard’s loss through injury in every playoff and then when Kuemper fell in Game 1 against Edmonton. The substitute Pavel Francouz won all the matches he filled, and now it looks like Kuemper will once again be an option in the final.
So yes, the Avs are very comfortable and are the perfect challenger for the consecutive champions. The Avs can never be counted on, and although they have made two sweeps to get here, they have demonstrated their ability to fight. Colorado has won six of the seven games in these playoffs where it has allowed the first goal of the game, which is twice the number of teams behind and the only team with a win percentage of more than .500 in this scenario.
The perspective of Tampa Bay
Speaking of lift teams, the Lightning are right there with Avs. Tampa Bay was ahead in its first round in Toronto by 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 before the victory, and then in the Eastern Conference final they lost the first two games against New York before winning four in a row.
As Justin Bourne wrote, the Lightning are masters at listening to a series, adapting to what the other team is doing, and then lowering the pedal.
We know all about the stars of their formation.
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