Lightning can learn from past in quest for third straight Cup title

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday.
This week Fischler offers his popular "Then and Now" segment, comparing the 1947-49 Toronto Maple Leafs -- the first NHL team to win the Stanley Cup three seasons in a row -- with the Tampa Bay Lightning, who'll be trying to win their third consecutive championship this season.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning share the same challenge, only 73 years apart -- how to win a third consecutive Stanley Cup championship.
In the spring of 1948, the Maple Leafs had won two titles in a row. Toronto manager Conn Smythe called his 1947-48 champions, "The greatest team in Leafs history."
Some hockey experts added, "Best team ever."
Now it's the Lightning receiving praise after they won the Stanley Cup the past two seasons.
But it's also the Lightning, and their general manager Julien BriseBois, who face numerous challenges in trying to be the first team since the New York Islanders, who won the Cup four consecutive seasons from 1980-83, to accomplish a threepeat.
"Winning a third in a row wasn't easy," Smythe said. "But we beat the critics."
In the mid-1930's, Detroit Red Wings manager Jack Adams thought they could win three straight championships after winning the Cup in 1936 and 1937.
"I failed," Adams said, "because I stood pat instead of making trades."
Smythe had no choice but to revamp the Toronto lineup in 1948-49. His captain and future Hall of Fame center Syl Apps retired after the '48 playoffs. Apps had promised he'd quit if he reached the 200-goal mark. In the regular season finale, Apps scored a hat trick and finished with 201 goals.
"That was bad enough," Smythe said, "but I also lost another top center, Nick Metz, who left us, along with Syl. I tried talking Apps and Metz into coming back but they had made their decisions and that was that. I had to get to work."
The Maple Leafs still featured two future Hall of Fame centers, Ted Kennedy -- the new captain -- and Max Bentley, for whom Smythe had traded five players to the Chicago Black Hawks the previous November. Now he had to find a replacement for Apps, described by the New York World-Telegram as "Hockey's Greatest Star." And he did just that.

Twelve days after their second straight Cup triumph, the Maple Leafs made a trade with the New York Rangers. Toronto acquired center Cal Gardner, left wing Rene Trudel and defenseman Bill Juzda for defensemen Wally Stanowski and Elwyn Morris.
Seven decades later, BriseBois can empathize with Smythe. Thanks to the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft, NHL salary cap issues and other factors, the Lightning must replace four key forwards -- Blake Coleman, Barclay Goodrow, Yanni Gourde and Tyler Johnson -- and defenseman David Savard.
"Despite the losses," BriseBrois said, "I'm looking forward. I expect us to remain a Cup contender because we have elite players at all key positions. They're either in their prime or entering their prime."
BriseBois is right. The Lightning still have forward Nikita Kucherov, who led the Stanley Cup Playoffs with 32 points (eight goals, 24 assists) last season and 34 points (seven goals, 27 assists) in 2020; forward Brayden Point, who led the playoffs with 14 goals last season; center Steven Stamkos, who scored 18 points (eight goals, 10 assists) in 23 playoff games last season; defenseman Victor Hedman, the Conn Smythe Trophy winner voted as playoff MVP in 2020; and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Conn Smythe winner in 2021.
Tampa Bay added veteran forwards Corey Perry and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and defenseman Zach Bogosian this offseason.
If there's any cautionary advice for the Lightning to be gleaned from the Maple Leafs' attempt to win a third straight championship, it's all about overconfidence.
Maple Leafs coach Hap Day realized that fact as they struggled all season just to reach the .500 mark in 1948-49.
"They'd won two Cups already," Day said, "and if I got on their case, they'd say, 'What? D'you expect us to win every year?' When a mental lag comes, it hits the whole team at once."
With a tepid 22-25-13 regular-season record, Toronto just barely slid into the fourth and final playoff berth. But their major asset was the same as the Lightning -- first-rate goaltending.
What Vasilevskiy means to the Lightning, Turk Broda was to the Maple Leafs. Already, a three-time Cup-winner (1942, 1947, 1948), Broda inspired Toronto Star reporter Red Burnett to write, "Broda 'stole' several Stanley Cups."
Toronto's quest for a third consecutive title began with a playoff semifinal against the second-place Boston Bruins. Toronto right wing Howie Meeker scoffed when he heard Boston coach Dit Clapper claim that the Bruins would win the series.
"We weren't a below .500 club," Meeker said. "Anybody who considered us that, was way out of their minds."
Toronto won the best-of-7 series in five games. In the other semifinal, the Detroit Red Wings needed seven games to eliminate the Montreal Canadiens.
The Stanley Cup Final in 1949 pitted the first-place Red Wings (34-19-7) against an underdog outfit that was conspicuously not worried.
"We'll be trying to take them in four straight as we did last season," Toronto defenseman Bill Barilko said.
And, so they did, emphatically. Typically clutch -- like Vasilevskiy -- Broda allowed only five goals in the four-game sweep. After the Cup presentation, and as the cheering finally subsided, Smythe stood in the corridor outside the Maple Leafs dressing room. When the players entered, Smythe shouted, "You did it! You did something never done before. You've taken that Cup three years in a row!"
Now it's Tampa Bay's turn to try and match that feat.