The Tampa Bay Lightning name has become synonymous with winning. Over the past 10 years, it seems the Lightning have always been in the conversation of teams who might take the Stanley Cup. In the last two years, they have emerged victorious and crowned champions. Yesterday, with their 2-1 victory over the New York Rangers, they captured their third straight Prince of Wales trophy, and have moved a step closer to securing a Stanley Cup 3-peat, a feat that hasn’t been completed since the New York Islanders dynasty in the early 1980s.
The last sports franchise to 3-peat in their respective league was the Los Angeles Lakers in 2002. The Lakers housed Shaq and Kobe on those teams, so this Tampa Bay 3-peat would be of epic proportions if they successfully pull it off. Led by captain Steven Stamkos, and a powerhouse roster comprised of Brayden Point, Victor Hedman, Andrei Vasilevsky, Nikita Kucherov, Anthony Cirelli, and Mikhail Sergachev, this team is in the best hands possible.
The Lightning is the prime example of what good ownership and upper management can do to a team’s on-ice (or on-field) success. If a winning mentality is started from the top-down, then the team will be successful no matter what lies in their way. The same goes for the opposite; if a team’s upper management has a losing mentality, then no matter how good they are, they’ll always end up coming short.
Prime examples of consistently winning franchises include the San Antonio Spurs, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and, obviously, the Tampa Bay Lightning. This isn’t to say that these teams don’t go through some skids and hard times (everyone does), but through it all, they always seem to consistently be at the top of the standings.
With a win in their upcoming Stanley Cup Finals series against the Colorado Avalanche, the Lightning have the chance to join elite sporting company and cement themselves as one of the greatest sports dynasties in the modern era. Winning a Stanley Cup is hard enough as it is. Winning it three times in a row? That’s virtually unheard of in today’s NHL; a league with 32 teams, grueling schedules, and a game of inches every night.
The Lightning are a team of historic proportions. Do they have what it takes to complete the 3-peat? Absolutely. Will they? I guess we’ll find out this week.