Title Remains In Tampa

The Stanley Cup. The holy grail for hockey and the oldest championship awarded among the major North American Sports. Winning it once is hard to do. Winning it in back to back seasons is even harder to pull off. That's what happened this year. The Tampa Bay Lightning captured hockey's holy grail for the second year in a row, this time defeating the Montreal Canadians in five games to capture the prize.

It was a total domination from start to finish by the Lightning. Yes, the Canadiens got the game four win on the overtime goal from Josh Anderson. Montreal, give credit where it's due for getting this far. They came back from down 3-1 to Toronto to pull off the upset. Then swept Winnipeg. Finally added to it by beating the second best team in the league in Vegas in a hard fought third round series. Montreal surprised a lot of people with what they did. Carey Price played amazing in net in the playoffs and carried the Habs to where they finished, so full credit is do to all in Montreal for what they did.

\Tampa was just the better team. The team got hot at the right time, they got healthy at the right time and took that wave of momentum all the way to the title. They got their best players, guys like Hedman, Stamkos, Kucherov and Vasilevskiy all at the top of their game and getting better as the playoffs went along. Now the question is, can they keep this group together for a shot at a third title next season?

Winning back to back is a very tough thing to do in sports in the modern era. Winning a third straight is going to be even harder given the current climate in sports. With a cap and all of that, keeping dynasty teams in tact is tougher then it was thirty or more years ago. Tampa management has been good at being able to keep this core group together and keep the Lightning in the mix over the last number of years. They have to find a way to do it again, in even tougher circumstances with the expansion draft in Seattle coming up.

But with it all going on last year and this year, the fact that the Bolts have come out on top in each of the last two seasons speaks volumes about the team and how well its run. Congratulations to the Lightning for their second straight championship win!