Dreams of Game 7 are simpler when you’re young, but then aren’t all dreams that way?
Uncluttered by experience, kids who dream in street hockey about playing a Game 7 for the Stanley Cup — or to get to one — aren’t encumbered by the concepts of legacy and reputation. They don’t think about the impact of winning or losing on their employment or their teammates, about potential last chances and how one game can define a person and make them the subject of adulation or scorn. And you certainly don’t think about complications like trying to win Game 7 without your best player.
There is simply the excitement and joy of playing and the glorious likelihood of winning. Because nobody dreams of losing.
“Different people handle it differently,” New York Islanders coach Barry Trotz said Friday morning. “Some people feel the weight of a Game 7, some people embrace it. And what I try to do is just understand and get the message off that you want to embrace it, you want to embrace these moments.”
The Islanders and Tampa Bay Lightning have won more playoff games than anyone else in the National Hockey League over the last three seasons but one of them will be eliminated tonight in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup semifinal in Florida.
The Lightning, which look likely to play without playoff MVP Nikita Kucherov, at least have Stanley Cup rings from last season, although the jewelry will be of little immediate consolation tonight if the team regarded as the best in the NHL — and the winningest one over the last eight seasons — fails again to make the final.
The last time the Lightning was dragged into a Game 7 to go to the Stanley Cup Final, they lost in 2018 to the Washington Capitals, coached then by Trotz, who left the organization to join the Islanders soon after the Capitals won their championship.
Eliminated by Tampa in the conference final last September, the Islanders forced Game 7 by surging back from a two-goal deficit to beat the Lightning 3-2 in overtime Wednesday on Long Island.
Since its shocking first-round upset by the Columbus Blue Jackets two years ago, the Lightning are 12-0 in playoff games after a loss. But Tampa was also 37-1 this season when leading after two periods before New York ran them down in Game 6.
“You have to trust what you’ve done during the year for moments like this,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said after this morning’s skate. “This is no time to sit here and… reinvent the wheel. You have to trust in your system, your team, your players, your coaches, that everything you’ve done all year to get us to this point, trust in that and the game will take care of itself. I don’t think you can sit here and say: ‘Oh my gosh, it’s this game, we’ve got to do this.’ No, trust your process.”
Asked about the status of Kucherov, the playoffs’ runaway scoring leader who was injured in Game 6 on an unpenalized crosscheck by the Islanders’ Scott Mayfield, Cooper said: “Not sure. I wish I could give you guys lineup answers, and I can’t.”
Kucherov did not skate this morning.
The team played all season without Kucherov, whose encampment on long-term injured reserve conveniently made Tampa salary-cap compliant. The second-best skater in the playoffs is Lightning centre Brayden Point, who by scoring tonight will tie Reggie Leach’s 1976 record of goals in 10 straight playoff games.
“We’ve been able to prove it time and time again that there’s no stage too big for this group, so we’re excited,” Tampa winger Blake Coleman said. “Obviously, this is what it’s all about, what kids dream about playing in Game 7s, with a shot at the finals on the line. So we feel good, we’re excited. Puck drop can’t come quick enough.”
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Given the strength of their rosters, playoff experience and what they’ve shown in these playoffs, it’s tempting to regard Lightning-Islanders as the unofficial Stanley Cup Final.
But that, of course, would be dangerously dismissive of the Montreal Canadiens, whose unexpected playoff journey just took them past the mighty Vegas Golden Knights in the other semifinal and places a Canadian team in the final for the first time since the Vancouver Canucks were beaten by the Boston Bruins in 2011.
“I talk about the journey, probably more than the outcome,” Trotz said. “The journey is very important for players. It’s the journey of the regular season, the journey of the playoffs, it’s the journey within the game — that you have to stay in the moment. To me, it’s life. You’re going to have challenges in life as you are in Game 7s, and how you deal with it, how you deal with the pressures, how you deal with what’s going on in that moment, that sort of allows you to have success.”
“You try to treat it like any other game,” Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. “But it’s not.”
Dream big.
