NEW YORK — They had already emptied the dressing room of all the equipment. The mini-celebration was fizzling out.
Then Charles Barkley, about the last guy you’d expect to have Stanley Cup fever, walked down the corridor from the Tampa Bay Lightning dressing room and called Friday’s Game 7 victory at Madison Square Garden one of the most impressive he’s ever seen.
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: | Broadcast Schedule
Rogers NHL GameCentre LIVE | Stanley Cup Playoffs Fantasy Hockey
New Sportsnet app: iTunes | Google Play
“It’s pretty much impossible,” Barkley, the former NBA star, told Sportsnet. “It’s pretty amazing and remarkable to do that. It’s cool.
“I was happy for them because obviously everybody wrote them off after they lost Game 6 at home.”
This, in a nutshell, is the Lightning. They are the kind of team that can keep company with Sir Charles and reel off three road wins in the Eastern Conference final.
Against the more battle-tested New York Rangers, they were unafraid to verbally challenge the mythology around Henrik Lundqvist in Game 7 and backed it up with a near-flawless 2-0 win.
“For whatever reason, that was probably the most calm Game 7 I’ve ever played in,” said Lightning captain Steven Stamkos. “Not just for me, but just on the bench. I don’t know what it was.”
This team has grown in ways you might never have thought possible after seeing it get swept out of the first round by Montreal last spring. Fast forward a year and the Lightning will face either Chicago or Anaheim for the Stanley Cup, with an opportunity to become the youngest champion since the 1993 Habs.
How they got here is an unbelievable tale.
Tampa made an unexpected run to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final four years ago, and fell one goal short in Boston. Over the ensuing 1,463 days, general manager Steve Yzerman completely overhauled the organization.
He fired a coaching staff and traded a captain. He methodically dismantled his roster — save for Stamkos and Victor Hedman — and drafted smartly. He signed two veteran Rangers castoffs last summer and brought in more experience at the trade deadline.
And when they got another chance to play a game of this magnitude they were ready.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Hedman.
The clinching game was a masterclass in execution. They held the Rangers to just 11 shots through a tension-filled two periods, smothering their opponent every time it got in the offensive zone.
When opportunity knocked, Tampa answered. Alex Killorn squeezed a shot just through Lundqvist’s legs at 1:54 of the third before Ondrej Palat added an insurance marker with an unbelievable shot at 11:17.
That was more than enough. On a night where you couldn’t afford to make a mistake, the Lightning kept their cool.
“You shine the light bright on our guys, and they’ll just put on sunglasses and walk right through it,” said coach Jon Cooper.
“Going into the third period we were loose,” added Stamkos. “We knew we were playing the game the right way, we knew we were going to get one.”
In recent days, Stamkos kept saying that this time was different. The team, the feeling in the dressing room, everything.
Download Sportsnet magazine now: iOS | Android | Windows
But it wasn’t until seeing them fritter away Game 6 — getting torched for five goals in the third period — before rebounding with this performance in Game 7 that everyone on the outside could know for sure.
On Thursday night, three-time Stanley Cup champion Justin Williams wondered aloud if the Lightning could handle New York’s experience. The man known as Mr. Game 7 had been asked about what it takes to win under this kind of pressure.
“Every team has to learn (to win),” Williams told Sportsnet. “Tampa’s eventually going to — well some teams do it, some teams don’t. Tampa Bay, you never know, right? It could be their time to say ‘this is our time, we’re going to do it, we’re going to learn to win right away, right now, and we’re never going to look back.”‘
The brashness of youth, the collective chip on their shoulder, certainly helped.
Stamkos pointed out on Friday morning that Lundqvist may have had a lot of previous Game 7 success, but he’d never faced the Lighting under those circumstances. These were the words of a man who knows his place in the world — a 25-year-old, seven-year NHL veteran ready for bigger and better challenges.
“I don’t know if a lot of people believed in us, but we believed in ourselves,” said Stamkos. “It’s all that mattered. Maybe a little motivation watching all the (TV) networks talking about how the Rangers were this unbeatable force in Game 7. …
“We believed, and that was huge,” he added. “We’re getting a chance to live out this dream. We deserve it.”
Those words were delivered with the kind of swagger Barkley might appreciate.
The Basketball Hall of Famer says he became a Lightning fan after a chance meeting with Cooper in a hotel bar a couple years ago, and made it clear that he’s all-in on their chase for the Stanley Cup.
“I’ll be there,” said Barkley. “You’ve got my word.”
So will the Tampa Bay Lightning. This should be fun.
