(1) What the Lightning did - have Kucherov be on LTIR all season which removes his cap hit - is 100% legal, and has direct precedence, when the Blackhawks put Kane on LTIR midway through the 2015 season, which allowed them to clear enough salary to trade for three players at the deadline. The NHL could've closed the loophole then. They didn't.
(2) The 2015 Blackhawks then won the cup, beating Tampa 4-2 in a very closely played final. The Lightning were one of the few, if not only, teams to at the time raise noise that the NHL should close that loophole by implementing a salary cap maximum for the playoffs, but basically no one went along. If anything, there's some poeticism that the team on the losing end of this rule last time were the ones using it now.
(3) Other teams fans complaining is ridiculous, since any fan would be 110% ok if their team did the exact same thing. If anything, that's who they should be made about - all teams should be doing this when possible. Its the fact the owners don't want to spend the money that stops it from happening. The Tampa owner was cool spending it.
(4) The most ridiculous notion is the one that its only because of this loophole that Kucherov was playing in the playoffs, which is nonsense. If the loophole didn't exist, the Lightning aren't cutting bait on Kucherov. No, what happens is they buyout Tyler Johnson when they couldn't find a taker for him, and aren't able to trade for Denis Savard. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Lightning can still win the Cup without a 4th line player and a D-Man who many felt wasn't as good as the guy they often scratched in his place: Luke Schenn
(5) and finally.... the one part that so often gets left out of this is this "loophole" meant the Lightning dind't have Kucherov all year. If you think this is some pandora's box, well most teams can't afford to just put their best offensive player on the side for the entire season and still feel confident enough that they'll make the playoffs. The Lightning should be applauded for that type of depth. Anyway, no more mention of this...**
The Lightning rose to prominence in 2015. That year they made a spirited run to the Stanley Cup Finals. They were the top scoring team in the league (265 goals - the NHL was still quite different offensively six years ago). They had 108 points. They beat the President's Trophy winning Rangers in a classic 7-game Conference Final, their playoff run spearheaded by "The Triplets" line of Nikita Kucherov (21 at the time), Ondrej Palat (23) and Tyler Johnson (24). At the head was their sniping captain in Steven Stamkos (24) and young blue-liner getting better year by year in Victor Hedman (24). They were the future of the league.
They still are - with those exact five players still contributing, in many ways still the mainstays of the team, adding to that core Andriy Vasilevsky, who was just 20 years old and the backup at the time, and Brayden Point who came on board a few years later. The current Lightning run started then - we can call it back to back championships, and that is most certainly true, but in reality this is the culmination of a seven year run that is ludicrous for the modern NHL.
Over the past seven seasons, the Lightning won two Stanley Cups, lost one other Stanley Cup Final (2015), twice lost in Game 7 of the Conference Finals (2016, 2018), and in the two remaining years had one legitimate "down" season mostly due to injuries (2017) and one year where they got unceremoniously swept after ceremoniously having the best regular season in a generation (2019). This is a 7-yaer run of extended success with more or less the same core. That's the story - the back to back Cups just let us tell it as so.
It's not fair to reduce the Lightning's brilliance to just these two years winning Cups. Certainly though there are myriad plaudits for doing that. From those core guys who were incredible two straight years. Nikita Kucherov becoming the first player not named Gretzky or Liemieux to score 30+ points in back-to-back playoff years. Brayden Point becoming one of the rare players to lead the NHL in playoff goals back to back seasons. Vasilevsky having five straight series clinchers be shutouts. Hedman being truly great in two straight postseasons.
We can write how they learned to win, how they buttressed these great stars with better depth the past two seasons - and people will rightly point to players like Barclay Goodrow and Brandon Coleman who they acquired in the 2020 deadline and played big roles each of the past two years alongside more established Lightning Yanni Gourde for a dominant 3rd line. That all is true, but so is the fact hte Lightning had something special all along and finally got hte bounces and got the results to show it.
Hidden in that 2015-2019 run of great success but playoff disappointments weren't even that many disappointments. For years people would point to those and mock the Lightning, another offense/skill-first team that "couldn't get it done when it mattered." Let alone the fact that during that five year stretch the only team that won more playoff rounds than the Lightning's seven were the Penguins who won back to back Cups (9 rounds total).
Before we get back to the teams these past two years, let's quickly extol the Lightning from 2015-2019, who did all of this while keeping their forward group remarkably consistent (aside from Point and Gourde), and turning over the whole D-Core minus Hedman through trades (McDonagh, Sergachev, Cernak, Savard, Schenn - all trade acquisitions).
From 2015-2019, these disappointments did the following:
= They led the league in goals three times (2015, 2018, 2019 - the last two with 296 and 325 goals)
= They won a President's Trophy (2019), and led the Eastern Conference in points another time (2018)
= They beat teams in the playoffs that had 113 points (Rangers, 2015), 112 points (Bruins, 2018, beat them 4-1) and 110 points (Canadiens, 2015)
= They won a Game 7 on the road to win a Conference Title (Rangers, 2015)
= Made more conference finals than any other team (2015, 2016, 2018)
= Had a player win the Hart Trophy (Kucherov, 2019)
= Had a player win a Vezina Trophy (Vasilevsky, 2019)
= Had a player in a Norris Trophy (Hedman, 2018)
They were the 2nd best franchise in the NHL from 2015-2019, with Pittsburgh ahead of them only because of the playoff success. Maybe 3rd behind Washington who had great regular seasons in 2016 and 2017 prior to their Cup win. They were a great team. Now we can appreciate it because they followed that five year stretch with two Cup runs. Finally we can look beyond the "chokes" of losing 7-game series in the Conference Finals to eventual cup winners - the only real ignominy is the fact they led both series 3-2.
We can look past them because the Lightning didn't get better, they just got better results, these last two years. They also didn't panic, didn't burn it down, didn't think the core was fatally flawed. They just reshaped and retooled, and starting with a 5OT win in Game 1 in the bubble, through their 5-game submission of the Canadiens never stopped.
The Lightning in 2020 and 2021 weren't as good as the teams in 2018 and 2019; though the 2020 wasn't far off - leading the NHL in goals for a 3rd straight time. But they got the results the others couldn't. Two straight playoffs, only one elinimation game faced (the Islanders series this year). They dismantled great teams in five games both years in the quarterfinals (Bruins in 2020, Hurricanes in 2021). They didn't lose back to back games, which is an absurd statistic to do once (last team to do it was the 2007 Ducks) let alone two straight years. If not for a blown lead in Game 6 against the Islanders they would've gone back to back without facing elinimation.
The Lightning are the NHL's model franchise, but its not because of what they did in the ten month stretch from the bubble last year through to these playoffs. It's because of everything they've done really since Steve Yzerman took over before the 2010 season. The only remnants of the franchise before that was drafting Stamkos #1 in 2008 and Hedman #'2 in 2009 - both decisions anyone would've made those years. Everything else starts from Yzerman and required more skill - selecting guys like Kucherov, Point, Palat in later rounds. Taking a risk on Vasilevskiy in the 1st round. Building that team without being afraid to take risks - like trading a 1st-liner in Vladislav Namestnikov for Ryan McDonagh, or trading a former #3 overall pick in Jonathan Druin for Mikhail Sergachev - both deals paying off handsomely. The Lightning always resisted hte urge to tear it down, but never resisted the urge to do something.
It may not be over. The Lightning will have to make decisions this offseason, be it buying out Tyler Johnson, and letting Goodrow and Coleman walk. Who knows who replaces them, but the Lightning are deep enough to sustain those losses, and have clearly shown an unmistakable ability to develop younger players. The Lightning will still be very good next year, as they embark on a journey to do something no NHL team has done since the Islanders early-80s dynasty: win back-to-back-to-back Cups. Just know if they do, while we'll remember the threepeat, don't forget the brilliance of 2015-2019 that built that foundation as well.
