Tampa Wins Stanley Cup, Toronto Maple Leafs Should Celebrate

The Toronto Maple Leafs can take many lessons from the Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning.

The Lightning just won arguably the most meaningful, difficult Stanley Cup in NHL history, and before jumping into the fray here, I just want to say that the NHL did a wonderful job over the last couple of months.

The league took a big risk to try and do the playoffs, and the fact that they got it done without any players becoming infected is impressive.   There was no crowd there last night when Gary Bettman presented the Lightning with the Cup, but if there was, I’d like to think he would have gotten a standing ovation, instead of the usual boos.

Congratulations are in order to the league, the Lightning, Bettman, and everyone involved in providing some entertainment to hockey fans over the last couple of months.

Toronto Maple Leafs and the Lightning

First things first: let’s be happy a real team won the Cup, and not some team floating from a ridiculous run by their goalie.   I’m talking about the Blue Jackets, Canucks and Islanders here, not really Dallas.  Dallas had great goaltending when it counted, but they also just seemed to score at will whenever necessary.    They were a great story and I enjoyed cheering for them over the last few weeks.

But the Lightning are the class of the NHL, and they deserved to win.

The Leafs can take quite a few lessons here:

First, be patient.  The Lightning won the Cup a year after being bounced by the Blue Jackets in the first round.  They resisted the pressure to make major changes.  In fact, they did nothing.  They kept their core intact, knowing full well that the NHL is a league where flukes happen frequently in the playoffs.

Sure, they added some guys at the margins, but they aren’t a drastically different team from last year.  It’s nice to see Luke Schenn win a Stanley Cup for sentimental reasons, but whether the Lightning dressed Ron Hainsey or me, they were going to win anyways.

They led the NHL in scoring last year (tied with the Leafs, actually) and they led the league in scoring this year.

They have now proven that you can win in the NHL with a skill-first, offense-first team.   The Leafs probably knew that already, but at least their critics can now rest easy.  Offense can win in the NHL.  The Lightning are the best team of the last five years, not the Islanders, not the Coyotes.

You have to give full credit to the Lightning for not capitulating to the ridiculous narratives of the average critic of their team.  In the last five years they’ve won a Cup, made the Final and lost, and made the Eastern Final and lost.

In between those three spectacular seasons were a year in which they completely missed the playoffs and a year in which they lost in round one.  It’s important to believe in your vision and not let the randomness of results get you down.

That is why the Toronto Maple Leafs need to stick to their plan.  Keep the core together.  Focus on puck-possession.  Ignore the critics, and listen to the stats.

The Leafs led the NHL in scoring last year, and were third this year.  They are the NHL team most structurally and stylistically similar to the Lightning.  In fact, after Keefe took over, the Toronto Maple Leafs put up team stats on par with the Lightning.

The difference for the Leafs is that Tampa has been building their team since they drafted Stamkos and Hedman over a decade ago.  Remember that, because the Leafs are much farther ahead by a comparable time line, it just seems worse than it is due to some lousy luck in the playoffs.