Stars, Lightning savor opportunity to compete for Stanley Cup

Jamie Benn needed two words to describe what winning the Stanley Cup would mean to him.

"The world," the Dallas Stars captain said.
He'd likely have the same answer in any year.
This isn't any year, though. One of the main storylines during this Stanley Cup Final between the Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning is that it will be contested entirely in Edmonton, with no fans inside Rogers Place.
It's historic in that sense.
But none of that matters to the Stars and Lightning, not with the dream so close to becoming reality.
As different as 2020 has been because of the coronavirus pandemic, so much about the Stanley Cup Final, which starts with Game 1 of the best-of-7 series on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, SN, TVAS), is the same as it is every year, starting with the notion that the elation of winning will be almost impossible to contain and the heartbreak of losing almost unbearable to live with.
"We're obviously in a bubble in Edmonton, but for the most part the hockey is the same, the level of hockey, the compete level, it's all the same," said Stars forward Corey Perry, who won the Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks in 2007. "When we came back from the pause we were thinking that we were coming to Edmonton to win the Stanley Cup."
Forward Patrick Maroon is the only player on the Lightning who has won the Stanley Cup, doing so last season with the St. Louis Blues. Perry and center Tyler Seguin (2011, Boston Bruins) are the only players on Dallas who have won the Cup.
Neither coach, Rick Bowness of the Stars and Jon Cooper of the Lightning, has won the Cup, though they coached together in the 2015 Stanley Cup Final, when Tampa Bay lost in six games to the Chicago Blackhawks.
Cooper was the coach, Bowness his top assistant.
"I'm probably not sitting here today without the help of Rick Bowness," Cooper said.
Bowness said, "We had a talk about it again this morning, we're in the Stanley Cup Final, we're one of the two best teams in the National Hockey League this year, so just keep the focus on that. We're here to win the Stanley Cup. All of the things outside of it have changed and it's all different. … The goal is the same."
So are the nerves ahead of Game 1.
"It has to give you an extra push," Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. "You don't know how many opportunities you're going to get at this thing."

The physicality in the series is expected to be high and goals should be at a premium.
The Lightning are 8-3 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in games with five goals or fewer and 8-2 in one-goal games, including 5-1 in overtime.
All five games the Stars played in the Western Conference Final against the Vegas Golden Knights had five goals or fewer. They won four, each by one goal, and are 9-1 in those games in the playoffs.
"That's how it is sometimes in the playoffs, you have to be able to win those types of games, low scoring games," Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov said. "You have to stay patient, stick to your system and believe what we're doing."
This series is the first time two Russia-born goalies, Tampa Bay's Andrei Vasilevskiy and Dallas' Anton Khudobin, will go head-to-head as starters in the Cup Final.
The only other time a Russia-born goalie won the Stanley Cup as a starter was Nikolai Khabibulin with the Lightning in 2004.
"When I was growing up I was thinking my dream was to play in the NHL," Khudobin said. "I didn't think that deep to go win the Stanley Cup. When I got here and when I realized it's not easy to get there, it's not easy to get to the Final, I started thinking it would be accomplishment to at some point get there and win the Cup."
The matchups between some of the best in the NHL are also exciting, especially Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman and Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen.
Hedman has scored nine goals, tying Paul Coffey (1985) for the most by a defenseman before the Cup Final, and Heiskanen leads defensemen with 22 points (five goals, 17 assists).
"He's playing in every situation, and for a young defenseman that's tough to do, play those big minutes and be consistent," Hedman said of the 21-year-old. "He's a big contributor for them, so we have to make it hard on him."
But along with the storylines, there are questions in this Cup Final.
The main one is whether Lightning captain Steven Stamkos will play? The center hasn't yet this postseason because of a lower-body injury he sustained before training camp in July.
"We haven't ruled him out," Tampa Bay general manager Julien BriseBois said. "I don't expect him in the lineup [for Game 1]."
That's when it all starts at Rogers Place, the building that has already hosted 69 games this postseason.
"Twelve months ago, we were going into the first day of [training] camp, doing media, and here we are 12 months later," Perry said. "To have a chance to play for the Stanley Cup, that was our goal from 12 months ago, and it's still our goal today."