Lightning Beat Stars to Win Stanley Cup

The Tampa Bay Lightning scored a goal in each of the first two periods of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals and the defense shut down the Dallas Stars as Tampa Bay beat Dallas 2-0 to take the Finals 4-2 and win the Stanley Cup in Edmonton September 28th. This is Tampa Bay’s second Stanley Cup; the first was in the 2003-4 season.

The Lightning were also in the 2014-15 Finals, losing to the Chicago Blackhawks. This championship to some degree anyway, makes up for last season, then the Lightning led the league in the regular season with a record of 62-16-4 (128 points) only to get swept in the first round in four games against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy was superb in the nets again, stopping all 22 Dallas shots. Vasilevskiy was 18-7 with a 1.90 goals against average in the post season. Defenseman Victor Hedman won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff’s Most Valuable Player. In addition to his defense, Hedman scored 10 goals and had 12 assists. Brayden Point led all goal scorers with 14, and Nikita Kucherov led in assists (27) and points (34). The Lightning were without injured team captain Steven Stamkos except for one game.

The NHL and the players did a wonderful job with these playoffs in the two bubble cities of Toronto and Edmonton, keeping the Covid-19 virus out. Now the questions are, when will they start the next season, and what will the format for it be? The NHL was looking at an early December start, but with Covid-19 not going away and no vaccine yet, that seems unlikely. More recently, there has been talk of January sometime. At this point, it’s all up in the air.