2022 Stanley Cup Final Preview Avalanche Vs. Lightning

As the Tampa Bay Lightning go for their third consecutive Stanley Cup, which would make them just the fourth team in league history to do it, they face the best possible challenger the West could throw at them. If you thought the 2020 bubble win against Dallas was tainted (it wasn’t) due to the weird conditions, or that last season was an anti-climactic denouement against an overmatched Montreal Canadiens, the 2022 final is the ultimate test. Colorado is the best team Tampa Bay has faced in any of these three finals — and, in fact, they may be the best team the Lightning have faced at any point during this three-year run. The two teams got here in very different ways. The Lightning are fresh off a six-game series win against New York in which they dropped the first two games. In that series, Tampa Bay started with nine days of rest while the Rangers arrived right after a long seven-game series over Carolina. The Lightning started slow and then figured it out. If rest vs. rust was a factor at the start of that series, it may play a part again in the Cup Final. When Game 1 hits, Tampa Bay will be working on three days rest, while Colorado will have had eight days off after sweeping Edmonton. The Avs had seven days off between their Round 1 and 2 series, then won Game 1 in overtime and never trailed their series against the Blues. “It’s just a part of what we’re doing and the mindset we have is just being ready, staying ready,” Gabriel Landeskog said. “If we’re getting eight days off we’re getting eight days off and we’re gonna make sure we practise hard, rest up and are ready to go.” Hockey fans everywhere are certainly ready to go for what, on paper, is shaping up to be the best Cup Final in a few years. It’s the team trying to three-peat versus the up-and-coming contender we’ve seen coming for years that has finally reached its peak. Here’s how the two finalists stack up. HEAD TO HEAD RECORD Avalanche: 2-0-0 Lightning: 0-1-1 What’s at stake for Colorado: In 2016-17, the Avalanche had a horrendous season, one of the worst on record, finishing with 48 points in 82 games and then had horrible lottery luck, falling all the way to the fourth overall pick. No worries — they nabbed Cale Makar there. At the start of the next season they trade disgruntled centre Matt Duchene for a whopper of a return that included defenceman Sam Girard and a first-round draft pick that turned into Bowen Byram at fourth overall in 2019. And just like that, the Avs acquired half of their fully healthy top-six blue line. It’s been a steady build up from there. Over the next years, Devon Toews was acquired for a couple of second-rounders and then blossomed into a Team Canada-type of defenceman. Nazem Kadri was brought in for Alex Kerfoot and Tyson Barrie and his impact as the 2C has been huge, with 2021-22 being his best performance yet. Darcy Kuemper was brought in to be the No. 1 goalie this season via trade. And there have been a number of solid “around the edges” additions as well, including Andre Burakovsky and this year’s in-season adds, Arturri Lehkonen and Josh Manson. All the while, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic resisted the urge to pay up at past deadlines for the biggest fish, such as Taylor Hall or Claude Giroux. We’ve seen the Avs coming for a few years now and, after three consecutive second round losses, the 2022 team finally broke through, slashing their way through the Western Conference. What’s at stake now is to claim a Stanley Cup before all their star players sign new, expensive contracts that will make adding to the margins more of a challenge. After this season, Nathan MacKinnon will have just one more season with a $6.3 million cap hit before he becomes eligible for unrestricted free agency and in line to be one of the league’s highest earners. Kuemper and Nazem Kadri will both be UFAs this summer and at least one could be priced out of town. Makar ($9 million) and Mikko Rantanen ($9.25 million) have already secured their pay days. It’s not as though this should be Colorado’s only crack at the Cup — they still have a loaded roster and a GM who’s proven to be a great asset manager — but things will start to get tighter in the next season or two. The ages and contracts of this roster build are in the Goldilocks Zone right now so it’s imperative to finish the job before off-ice considerations pinch the outlook just a little. What’s at stake for Tampa Bay: The word “dynasty” can be thrown around a little easily in modern sports and that might be because we haven’t had many true historical ones in recent times. The NFL’s New England Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years in the early-2000s and another three in five years from 2014-18 and are one of the best examples of that — though some may even argue it. In the NHL, both the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks won three Stanley Cups in a six-year period over the past two-and-a-half decades and are the closest to a “dynasty” we’ve had in this sport since the Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers won 14 of 15 Stanley Cups (five for Montreal and Edmonton, four for the Isles) between 1976 and 1990. The Lightning can enter that type of stratosphere with a win in this series. If they can beat Colorado four times, the Lightning will be the first NHL team to win three consecutive Stanley Cups since the Islanders’ four-peat from 1980-83. Since the turn of the millennium the Penguins (2016, 2017) and Lightning (2020, 2021) are the only two teams to win back-to-back titles. The last teams in any of North America’s Big Four sports to win at least three titles in a row were the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers (2001, 2002, 2003) and MLB’s New York Yankees (1998, 1999, 2000). It’s impressive enough for these Lightning to have a shot at a three-peat in an age of parity under a salary cap, and even moreso when you consider we’ve had a flat cap for a couple of years now, which leaves even less room to handle player raises and roster turnover. Lightning GM Julien BriseBois has done masterful work. So too have the players, and it should also be acknowledged that while the past two seasons have sure been unusual (first a bubble playoffs and then a regionalized, 56-game calendar), that’s also been a unique challenge for the players to adapt to. A Lightning win should secure them a dynasty status in NHL history. And they’ll still be a force next year, too. ADVANCED STATSPlayoff 5-on-5 numbers via Natural Stat Trick Colorado’s outlook The Avs laid waste to the Western Conference in becoming the first team to win its regular season conference title and then reach the Stanley Cup Final since Chicago in 2013. It took Colorado just 14 playoff games to reach the Cup Final and they became just the eighth team since 1987 (when every playoff round became a best-of-7) to reach the fourth round with only two losses. But, we should note, just three of those teams went on to win the Stanley Cup. Colorado’s outlook is simply glowing. Defenceman Cale Makar leads the team with 22 points in 14 games and has the best points-per-game mark of any remaining player. He’s not been slowed at all in the playoffs and is now generating Bobby Orr vibes with his propensity to absolutely dominate and control the flow of play anywhere on the ice. And, of course, you have Nathan MacKinnon, a bull of a player who is often forgotten in “best player in the world” conversations, but should be right in the mix. He, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog have been the young, maturing leaders on this team for some time and are 2-3-4 in scoring to this point, as you might expect. But then you have Kadri, who has played with an edge that hasn’t crossed over to a suspension yet, which has been a troubling area for him in the past. Though he was injured in Game 3 of the West Final, he has not yet been ruled out even for Game 1 of the Cup Final. Devon Toews gets overshadowed by his defence partner, but is elite in his own right. Folks, it keeps going. Artturi Lehkonen, who sent the Avs to the Cup Final with a Game 4 OT winner against Edmonton, is tied for the league lead with three game-winning goals this post-season. Late-bloomer Valeri Nichushkin is averaging over 20 minutes a night. They’ve overcome losing Girard to injury all playoffs and then when Kuemper went down in Game 1 against Edmonton. Backup Pavel Francouz won every game he filled in for, and now it appears Kuemper will be an option again in the Final. So, yeah, the Avs have a lot going for them and are the perfect challenger for the back-to-back champs. You can never count the Avs out and, though they have pulled off two sweeps to get here, they have proven an ability to fight back. Colorado has won six of the seven games in these playoffs where they allowed the game’s first goal, which is twice as many as the teams behind them and the only team with a better than .500 winning percentage in this scenario. Tampa Bay’s outlook Speaking of comeback teams, the Lightning are right there with the Avs. Tampa Bay trailed its opening round series to Toronto 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 before pulling off the win, and then in the Eastern Conference Final they dropped the first two games against New York before winning four in a row. As Justin Bourne wrote, the Lightning are masters at feeling out a series, adapting to what the other team is doing, and then putting the pedal down. We know all about the stars atop their lineup. Nikita Kucherov is the highest-scoring player left standing with 23 points and he has a chance to join Wayne Gretzky, Bryan Trottier and Mike Bossy as the only players in league history to record at least 25 points…