![]() He led the NHL in goals saved above expectation, a measure of goalie performance based on where opposing chances are coming from, in each of the past two playoffs. When pucks did get through, Vasilevskiy was almost impenetrable, as is his custom at this point. Tampa Bay did not look like a team making a last stand, even as the Panthers spent the series controlling the puck the majority of the time. The Panthers had looked a little bit off in their own first-round win over the Capitals, but the Lightning sweeping Florida out of the playoffs in four games was still a tour de force. Then the Lightning played their local rivals, the Florida Panthers, who had won the Presidents’ Trophy with 122 points in the regular season. The Lightning won Game 6 on a counterattack after the Leafs’ best player fell down while looking for a pass at center ice, then they eked out a Game 7 road win on the strength of two goals from depth forward Nick Paul. In a seven-game, first-round series win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Lightning were at death’s door before the Leafs did what they always do. But none of that has happened, and terrifyingly, Tampa Bay might be gaining strength. Something should trip them up, because it’s hard to make the game develop your way three years in a row. They should get tired, because they have played so many damned games. Something-maybe dead legs, maybe puck luck-is supposed to catch up with the Lightning at some point. Nobody has won three Cups in a row since the New York Islanders won four from 1980 to ’83. ![]() The Penguins hit a post in the same overtime that eliminated them. Or maybe the good fortune any team needs to win a Stanley Cup just ran out. “Maybe we were a little bit tired,” Evgeni Malkin said afterward. Washington beat them in overtime to clinch a six-game series, ending Pittsburgh’s three-peat bid. The Penguins had also played way more games than anyone else. After the Pittsburgh Penguins went back-to-back in 2016 and ’17, they pushed into the second round in 2018 against the Washington Capitals, whom they’d beaten in the previous two playoffs. There are not a lot of cases like Tampa Bay’s, but that’s supposed to catch up with a team. Not every player played every game those two years (star winger Nikita Kucherov missed the entire 2020-21 regular season before returning for the playoffs), but still, the Lightning have played a lot of hockey and put a lot of tread on their tires. Their roster is not exactly the same as it was in 2020 or 2021, but the core of the team is still in place. In these three years, the Lightning have played a quarter-season’s worth of more hockey than anyone else.
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