Tampa Bay Lightning Try To Win Stanley Cups. How Hard Is It?

Repeats: 17 since 1927, including the Lightning.

Threepeats: Five, with two title runs stretching to four in a row and one, the Montreal Canadiens from 1956-60, to five straight. The league’s two-time champs have a 31 percent success rate the next season.

It turns out that 31 percent is pretty close to the baseline for most leagues, with one exception.

Most recent: The 1981-82 Islanders, a string that reached four the following season. “At the beginning of the year, people figured the Islanders would win it,” said Roger Neilson, the coach of the Vancouver Canucks, the losing Cup finalist in 1982. “In the middle of the season, people said they would, and heading into the playoffs, people figured they’d win it. It takes a real team to get through that kind of pressure.”

As for the chance of another threepeat 40 years later: “When you’re growing up in Canada, you always dream about having your name on the Stanley Cup,” Lightning Coach Jon Cooper said. “And to get there the first time, it was a dream come true. To get there a second time the next year was like a dream, like there’s no way we’re going back. And to go a third time is unthinkable.”

Starting in the mid-1970s, the Islanders were one of the best teams in the N.H.L., but the Stanley Cup consistently eluded them. The most disappointing years of the decade came in 1978 and 1979, when they finished with the most points in their conference during the regular season but failed to reach the finals.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/sports/hockey/lightning-stanley-cup-three.html