NHL: Tampa Bay Lightning strike twice, winning Stanley Cup in front of home fans in Florida
- American franchise repeats after winning last season inside a Covid-19 bubble
- Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy wins play-off MVP award, outduelling Montreal Canadiens’ Carey Price
It only took scoring once for the Tampa Bay Lightning to strike twice and repeat as Stanley Cup champions.
Backstopped by their star goaltender and the only two Tampa Bay players on the ice without their name on the Cup, the Lightning won it all for the second time in 10 months by beating the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Andrei Vasilevskiy had a series-ending shutout for an NHL-record fifth consecutive time dating to the 2020 final. Finishing with a handful in a frantic final minute, he made 22 saves to remain undefeated in games after a loss over the past two play-offs, both contested during a deadly pandemic with the Lightning coming out on top each time.
Ross Colton and David Savard weren’t around last year and made sure to put their stamp on Tampa Bay’s latest title run. Savard set up Coleman’s goal midway through the second period past Canadiens stalwart Carey Price that fired up the crowd of over 17,000 fans at Amalie Arena.
The scene couldn’t have been any further from the mirthless, empty arena where the Lightning won the Cup last September in a quarantined bubble across the continent in Edmonton, Alberta.
Tampa Bay joined Pittsburgh as the only back-to-back Cup winners in the salary-cap era, but even more impressively did it amid virus protocols with the shortest span between championships in the long history of the NHL.
