TAMPA, Fla. — They are, in the words of Steven Stamkos, the “ultimate beast.”
It’s not just the glittering array of talent the Chicago Blackhawks bring to a star-studded Stanley Cup final. There’s an undeniable mystique at play here, too.
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“They’re on the verge of a dynasty the way they’ve been the last couple years,” Stamkos, the Tampa Bay Lightning captain, said Monday. “This is the biggest challenge yet.”
It is a matchup of dreamers and believers. One organization that has been to the promised land and another clearly built to chart a course there eventually.
With still many hours and column inches to fill before Game 1 is played at Amalie Arena on Wednesday night, there is a danger of
overhyping the championship series. Both teams possess two forwards lines capable of slicing through a defence as if armed with a samurai sword.
In fact, after two low-scoring rounds to begin these Stanley Cup playoffs, the Blackhawks and Lightning have provided us salvation from all of the fretting about a return to the NHL’s dreaded “Dead Puck Era.”
Thank goodness for that.
“You look at their top two lines and their top four D, it’s almost like the Harlem Globetrotters out there at times on the ice the way they can pass it and move,” Stamkos said of the Blackhawks. “You can see that they’ve played together for a while, that core bunch of guys. They know where they are on the ice all the time.”
He could just as easily have been talking about his own team, at least the version we’ve seen through three roller-coaster rounds so far. The Lighting’s top six forwards have scored 45 (of the team’s 55) goals this post-season, an average of 2.5 per game.
That’s a slightly better clip than Chicago’s rotating top-six (2.19 per game) have managed, and it came while facing elite goaltenders Carey Price and Henrik Lundqvist in the last two rounds.
What both coaches must determine in the leadup to Game 1 is how much line matching they want to get involved with. Neither Joel Quenneville nor Jon Cooper have shown much affinity for the practice in earlier rounds — it can disrupt the rhythm on the bench — and if that continues, we’ll likely see plenty of best-on-best.
For example, it could mean Tyler Johnson’s potent triplets against Jonathan Toews and whichever wingers he’s playing with (it was Patrick Kane and Brandon Saad in Game 7 against Anaheim). Should that happen, five of the 10 top goal-scorers in the playoffs would be on the ice at the same time.
“I think it would be an unbelievable challenge,” said Johnson. “(Toews) is a great player; one of those players that you watch and you try to model your game after because he is a complete player and he works extremely hard.
“If that’s a matchup that happens throughout this series, we’re going to have to compete.”
For those without a rooting interest in this Stanley Cup final, that is what makes Chicago vs. Tampa so tantalizing. Neither of these teams has any interest in playing cynical, smothering hockey and neither employs what was once commonly known as a shutdown line.
Instead, we have all kinds of players capable of making plays; two lineups that can create something from nothing.
One team we know a little better because of the major roles Toews and Kane have played in past championship runs. The other we’ve started to learn more about this spring and it has been a grand introduction so far.
Put together, they offer all of the ingredients needed for an exquisite stir fry. We’ll have to see if turns out that way once the heat gets turned up.
While there is bound to be a feeling-out process in the early going of this series, Cooper has made it clear to his players that they can’t afford to be timid against such an accomplished foe: “With the team we’re playing, there’s not enough games to take one off.”
The NHL’s clever marketing campaign for the final is built on the idea of a “name.” As in making one for yourself, and getting it in engraved into the rounded edges of the Stanley Cup.
Even if this Lightning team hasn’t yet managed to accomplish that like Chicago, some of the players are starting to visualize what it might be like.
“There’s definitely the image of you hoisting the Stanley Cup,” said Stamkos. “I mean that’s just natural. As soon as the playoffs start, I think you’re having your pre-game naps thinking about that.”
First they must find a way to slay the Beast.
