Tampa Bay celebration looked a lot different this year

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This article was published 08/07/2021 (1841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TAMPA, Fla. — It was just last September, inside the Edmonton bubble, when the Tampa Bay Lightning capped off the strangest NHL season we’ve ever seen by raising the greatest trophy in sports under less-than-ideal circumstances.

I was one of the lucky few allowed inside Rogers Place, where the eerie silence surrounding that entire Stanley Cup Final was striking. From the pre-game walk to the downtown rink, empty streets everywhere, to the lonely post-game exit later that night after a muted on-ice celebration, you’d never have known hockey’s holy grail was on the line.

It was a grim, albeit necessary reminder of where we were as a society, with plenty more isolations and lockdowns still to come due to the ongoing global pandemic.

Contrast that to Wednesday night, where I was among the 18,600-plus inside Amalie Arena as the defending champs capped off the second strangest NHL season by once again raising Lord Stanley. This time, no canned sounds or manufactured pomp and circumstance were required. The glorious soundtrack was playing out in real time, a euphoric, cathartic celebration that had been a long time coming.

And there was no doubt what was at stake.

“We Want The Cup,” fans stood and chanted for much of the third period, with Tampa clinging to a 1-0 lead over Montreal Canadiens. They got it, all right, as their team held on to finish the best-of-seven series in five games, allowing them to witness the coronation they missed last season due to COVID-19.

“To do it in front of our fans and our families, it’s so special, special, I never thought I would ever experience this in my life. It’s unbelievable,” an emotional Victor Hedman said. “You can’t explain it. It’s out of this world. Winning a Stanley Cup is one thing. But doing it in front of our fans, family means the world.”

I don’t doubt that for a second. You work your entire life, your whole pro career to get to this stage, it’s only fitting to get a proper send-off. Outside the rink was a real blast, too, with thousands more fans dancing and chanting and cheering and a hot, humid night. Making up for lost time and celebrating two Cups for the price of one, perhaps.

“A full arena. Incredible energy. And another championship in Tampa? It feels like things are normal,” said commissioner Gary Bettman, who avoided getting booed for maybe the first time in his career — yeah, people were THAT happy — as he came out to present the trophy to Lightning captain Steven Stamkos, who took the first joyous lap before the it was handed off to teammates for their special moment.

In that sense, this all felt bigger than a hockey game. It shows just how far we’ve come as a society, thanks to a rapid rise in vaccinations and a major decline in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Having covered nothing but empty rink games during the regular-season, then playoff ones with 500 people (in Winnipeg) and 3,500 (in Montreal), I’d forgotten what it feels like to experience a huge crowd. There’s really nothing like it, especially when the stakes are as high as a Stanley Cup Final. The “ooohs” and “ahhhs,” the shrieks of anticipation and gasps of frustration. The spontaneous cheers and chants and rally cries. The jeering of the opponent and the officials.

I certainly won’t take any of that for granted going forward.

Of course, some things never change, and the Lightning being a damn good hockey team is one of them. Jon Cooper’s crew can now lay claim to being perhaps the closest you can come to a modern-day dynasty in a salary-cap era.

It’s not just all the big stars, the ones that have them way over the US$81.5-million ceiling thanks to some creative accounting and good fortune on the injury front, that can kill you. The Cup winner this time around came off the stick of 24-year-old Ross Colton, for cripes sake. I’m not sure he was even a household name in his own residence prior to Wednesday, but the 2016 fourth-round draft pick with more AHL games than NHL ones on his resume now has quite the footnote to be added.

Unfortunately for every Cup winner there has to be a loser, and the Canadiens can at least lay claim to being a somewhat lovable one. This group exceeded all expectations, except perhaps their own, during an improbable run that included upsets of Toronto, Winnipeg and then Vegas to get back to the Final for the first time since they won it all way back in 1993.

That’s the last time any club north of the border brought Lord Stanley back, a drought of 28 years that will now extend another 12 months, at least.

After getting embarrassed in Game 1 in this very rink, and Game 3 last week on home ice, Montreal at least showed some fight in the last two. They pulled off a rather improbable overtime victory at Bell Centre on Monday night to force the series back down to Florida, and they were within one shot all night Wednesday of taking it back up north. But Andrei Vasilevskiy, named the Conn Smythe winner as playoff MVP, couldn’t be beaten, and so they’ll return home empty-handed.

Montreal gave us a good Cinderella storyline, for sure. But in the end they were no real match for a superior opponent, one that is likely to look much different by next season given the salary cap issues they were able to get around when it no longer applies in the playoffs. They’ll worry about that another day. Banners fly forever, as they say.

It was quite a memorable day around here, with tropical storm Elsa making landfall early Wednesday morning, and fortunately weakening quickly before she could cause too much damage.

Then the Tampa Bay Rays, who made it to the World Series last fall, served up a tasty mid-afternoon appetizer when five pitchers combined on a no-hitter in the second game of a double-header. True story — I was in the crowd at Tropicana Field for that, taking advantage of a few hours of pre-game free time. Dumb luck, I know. Scratch “witness a no-hitter” off my sporting bingo card.

And then the Lightning struck at night, just the latest title for a town that also is home to the reigning Super Bowl champs in Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. And oh, what a party it touched off, inside and outside the rink, one that looked and felt and sounded a whole lot different than last year’s.

Fittingly, a unique NHL season that started with a whimper — don’t forget every building in North America was empty when the puck dropped in mid-January — now ends with a bang, giving us all a tantalizing taste of where we’re hopefully heading as a collective society.

And that, more than anything, is reason to celebrate.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg