Luckiest jerseys in the NHL’s long and storied history
13. 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning
The Tampa Bay Lightning currently have no need for luck. They are too good for luck. In fact, they are so much better than anyone else in the league at this moment that luck can only hurt them. Luck plants the seeds of karma (I just came up with that – good, right?). If something is running so perfectly, the last thing you want is any seeds of doubt, even if they are the slightest, dumbest seeds imaginable.
The 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lighting are perfect, but it wasn’t always this way. The Lighting in the past weren’t as good, and because of this, they were hard-pressed to fill their Floridian stadium. That all changed with two big-name players. Martin St. Louis and Vincent Lecavalier.
Lecavalier was drafted in 1998 and dubbed the “Michael Jordan of hockey” by the Lightning team owner. While this was a stretch, he was definitely the Michael Jordan of Tampa Bay hockey. St. Louis would join him in 2000 and the team would never look back. The two stars tore up the league and eventually, won Tampa Bay it’s first Stanley Cup in 2004. They won a seven game series against a big, strong Calgary Flames team and solidified hockey in Tampa Bay.
Since 2004, they’ve missed the playoffs six times. Two of those times were almost solely due to injury-riddled seasons. Over the last four seasons, they’ve lost two conference finals and a Stanley Cup finals (to the Blackhawks in 2015). The 2018-19 Lightning team seems head and shoulders above any of those past four seasons, which is a scary thought, considering how well they’ve done.
We’ll go with 2004 as the luckiest year in team history, but 2019 can only be defined as unlucky if this team doesn’t win a Stanley Cup. They are that good.