Damien Cox: The Tampa Bay Lightning are champions in strange times — NHL chameleons who can play it any way you want

The Tampa Bay Lightning, despite back-to-back Stanley Cups, won’t go down as one of the great teams in NHL history. The bloated nature of the league — we’re up to 32 teams now — and a flat salary cap for the conceivable future will make true greatness impossible for any club.

Sad but true.

The title to which the Lightning may be able to lay claim, however, isn’t bad at all. That would be arguably the most versatile and adaptable team in NHL history.

Think about it. Because of COVID-19, Tampa Bay has had to win a Cup after an interrupted season that was followed by a set of “bubble” playoffs, in which the Bolts played all their post-season matches in either Toronto or Edmonton. To defend the title, Tampa had to navigate a 56-game regular season in which they played largely to empty arenas and only within their division, then win a Cup tournament in which they didn’t play a non-division team until the final four.

Now, the Lightning will try to three-peat in a return to a “normal” 82-game season with full playoffs, after having their roster cannibalized by other clubs over the off-season.

If successful, Steven Stamkos and Co. will be able to say they have won three consecutive Cups under three sets of very different conditions, all with a pandemic wreaking havoc on North American society in the background.

That would be impressive indeed.

The Lightning, who open their 2021-22 season next Tuesday at home against Pittsburgh, are part of what can only be termed a golden age of sports in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area, a community that didn’t have any professional franchises until 1976 and is now home to the Stanley Cup champions, Super Bowl champions and the best team in baseball’s American League.

Tampa’s teams couldn’t be more different. The Rays don’t draw flies, have no money and are on the endangered list, but are also one of baseball’s most resourceful, patient and development-oriented organizations. The NFL Buccaneers, on the other hand, shocked football by luring NFL legend Tom Brady south from New England. Brady brought a few friends with him and the Bucs immediately won it all.

The Lightning, meanwhile, built a core through the draft and those players — Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy — are now among the wealthiest players in the game. To keep them happy financially, the Lightning had to watch over the summer as five important players from their Cup-winning squad were picked off by other clubs.

Their entire third line of Barclay Goodrow, Yanni Gourde and Blake Coleman was lost. Tyler Johnson, who gave the team important scoring depth, is gone. Defenceman David Savard, added from Columbus at last season’s trade deadline, is now in Montreal.

Tampa management knew this was coming and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. There was no payroll sleight of hand they could employ similar to last season, when Kucherov and his $9.5-million (U.S.) salary were kept on ice all season as he recuperated from hip surgery, before he magically reappeared in the playoffs when salary-cap limits don’t apply.

Instead, the Lightning signed veteran forwards Corey Perry and Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, brought back defenceman Zach Bogosian, signed veteran blueliner Brent Seabrook and inked 36-year-old Brian Elliott to back up Vasilevskiy. There is also high hope in Tampa that youngsters such as Ross Colton and Alex Barré-Boulet are ready to step up.

The Bolts have made the playoffs seven out of eight years and there’s no reason to panic now. All of those core players are still young. All are under contract for at least three more seasons.

That said, stalwart Ondrej Palát is entering the last year of his contract and will be difficult to re-sign, and the Lightning have picked in the top 20 of the NHL draft just once in the last seven years. The organization has lost its depth and is right at the salary-cap limit with no wiggle room.

So, this is where the Lightning find themselves as they start their quest for a three-peat.

They were third in the makeshift Central Division last year behind Carolina and Florida, and now return to the Atlantic to rejoin the Maple Leafs, Bruins, Canadiens, Panthers, Red Wings, Senators and Sabres. The Bolts will likely jostle with Toronto, Boston and Florida for the top spots, while Detroit, Ottawa and Buffalo will struggle. Montreal, which lost the Cup final to Tampa last season after a surprising playoff run, could go either way.

It won’t be easy for the Lightning. They had to compress a bubble playoff season, a regular season and another full playoff run with all the necessary travel into just over 11 months. That’s 104 games to win two Cups in less than a year, and 48 of those were high-intensity playoff contests. That kind of schedule takes a lot out of elite athletes, and the Lightning have only had three months to recover.

So, we’ll see how Jon Cooper gets his group going in a season that will also, for the team’s best players, include an energy-sapping trip to China for the 2022 Winter Olympics in February.

It’s going to take all the versatility the Bolts can muster to end up on top again this season. Then again, they’ve already proven they can play the game any way you want and still win.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin