Fansided

5 Ways any team can beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in the NHL playoffs

By Bruin Belisle

BOSTON - FEBRUARY 28: Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Louis Domingue looks back at the goal scored by the Bruins' Brad Marchand in the third period. The Boston Bruins host the Tampa Bay Lightning in a regular season NHL hockey game at TD Garden in Boston on Feb. 28, 2019. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
BOSTON - FEBRUARY 28: Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Louis Domingue looks back at the goal scored by the Bruins' Brad Marchand in the third period. The Boston Bruins host the Tampa Bay Lightning in a regular season NHL hockey game at TD Garden in Boston on Feb. 28, 2019. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) /
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The entire NHL has spent this season chasing the Tampa Bay Lightning. Come playoff time, there are a few ways teams can catch up.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have been unstoppable this season. They currently lead the NHL with 104 points. The next closest team is the Calgary Flames with 89 points. This is an impressive number with 16 games to go in the regular season, but it seems so underwhelming due to where the Lightning are in the standings.

Much of the Lightning’s success this season can be attributed to Nikita Kucherov. The eventual 2019 Hart Trophy winner has been putting on a show this season, collecting 31 goals and 75 assists in 66 games so far. 104 points through 66 games is unheard of in today’s NHL. There’s a very good chance you’ll have to go back to the Mario Lemieux days to find a season ending stat line that will look as good as Kucherov’s this year.

That being said, they play the games for a reason. The Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win for a reason and hockey might be the ultimate team sport. Even though it’s very clear that the Lightning are the best team, no one is unbeatable.

Here are five ways other NHL teams can take down the Lightning and go on to win the Stanley Cup.

Lightning
NEW DELHI, INDIA – FEBRUARY 25: Lightning seen as clouds hover in the sky, at Patel Nagar on February 25, 2019 in New Delhi, India. (Photo by Sanchit Khanna/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) /

5. Act of God

The key here is to score first. A 1-0 lead is all a team will need to beat the Lightning if actual lightning strikes the stadium and kills the power soon after the first goal is scored. It doesn’t have to be lightning. Any act of God will suffice, so long as the game has to be stopped immediately after the goal.

This might be tricky to plan for in a seven game series. A team will need four acts of God strong enough to shut down the power to whichever barn each game is played in. That’s likely two catastrophes per city. Unless we’re in a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson end-of-the-world movie, there’s a very good chance this won’t happen.

The teams in any series will have roughly two weeks to complete their series before the league moves on to keep up with other match-ups. If two cities were in the midst of record-breaking disasters, the NHL would likely move the games to neighboring cities. The Lightning would also be motivated to play harder for a hurricane-ravaged Tampa Bay, so this probably isn’t going to work.

It’s also frowned upon to “play God” or control the weather in any way. China took a lot of heat for moving some clouds when the Olympics were in Beijing. Creating a hurricane or triggering an earthquake could be viewed as a little worse. Next!

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