Close the curtains on the first stop of the Lightning’s 2020 tour of redemption - Tampa Bay Times

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Please, don’t call this revenge. That would imply a grievance of some type, and the Lightning have spent the past 16 months blaming only themselves.

No, this was more like the first purposeful steps toward absolution. More will eventually be required but, for now, beating Columbus 5-4 in overtime of Game 5 on Wednesday to move on to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is enough.

Enough to forgive, if not forget, the historic disappointment of last year’s postseason loss to Columbus. Enough to tweak, if not rewrite, the reputation of a team that has lost one big game too many.

Enough to cause the normally deadpan Jon Cooper to emphatically pump his fist as the Lightning coach walked off the ice following the traditional post-series handshake with the opponents.

#TBLightning's Cooper fist bumps walking off of the ice after 5-4 OT win against #CBJ #TBLvsCBJ pic.twitter.com/IeEW3uahDc

— 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚒 𝙵𝚊𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘 (wears a mask) (@faiello_mari) August 19, 2020

How much pent-up emotion was behind that gesture? “More than you’ll know,” Cooper said later. “I guess if you saw it, you pretty much know how I felt.”

To misquote a classic movie line, this was business and it was personal. You see, if you win as much as this franchise has for the past half-dozen years, your success begets your expectations. And too many near-misses tends to obscure all the acclaim.

Which means the Lightning entered this postseason as a glory-or-bust participant.

“It’s funny how the hockey gods work,” Cooper said. “To go through what we did last year and get second-guessed on a lot of the things we did, go through the (next) season and then have the pause, and everything that’s happened. Then, during reseeding and new rules, still end up playing the same team. It’s easy now to sit up here and say you wanted them, but it was good to get them and good to get this result.”

Related: Lightning-Blue Jackets Game 5 report card: Andrei Vasilevskiy gives Tampa Bay a chance

As it turned out, the final game was as gut-clenching as the rest of the series.

The Lightning jumped out to a 2-0 lead, watched the normally low-scoring Blue Jackets rip off four consecutive goals, came back to tie the score in the final 98 seconds of regulation and then won on overtime on another Brayden Point game-winner.

Four of the five games were decided by one goal and two ended in overtime. When you add up all the goals scored in regulation in the five games, the teams were tied 12-12.

Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper yells from the bench during overtime against Columbus on Wednesday. [ COLE BURSTON | The Canadian Press via AP ]

To many, that might sound like the second-seeded Lightning underachieved against a team that lost more games than it won during the regular season. Yet, in some ways, it suggests this is a better Lightning team than the one that looked like world-beaters in the 2018-19 regular season.

That Lightning team, in retrospect, was more flash than substance. And once those playoffs began, the defensive-minded Blue Jackets pounced on Tampa Bay’s high-rolling style. It was a painful lesson that the Lightning did not forget this season.

This time, the Lightning beat the Blue Jackets at their own game.

“It’s trying to put egos aside and realize that you don’t have to keep scoring goals,” said forward Tyler Johnson, who scored the first goal Wednesday on a redirected shot. “There’s times where you have to make that safer play, maybe dump it in compared to trying to make that hero pass that can go the other way. I think we had to grow as a group a little bit.”

Related: Lightning gift broadcaster Rick Peckham with a thrilling final game

For the past week, Lightning players insisted that this series had nothing to do with last year. That players had come and gone on both sides, and, thus, these were two different teams.

That was technically true, but it also was rubbish. Tampa Bay spent the past year trying to remake its reputation. The Lightning were trying to prove to the rest of the world that they could be gritty as well as fancy.

And redemption against Columbus was the best way to prove it.

“We had 422 days to think about it,” Cooper said, “but who’s counting?”

(Actually, it was 491 days, but why quibble with a good line.)

And so now, all this time later, the Lightning are in position to have the postseason so many people in Tampa Bay were waiting for in 2019. The Stanley Cup playoffs are not for the meek. They are like climbing rungs of a burning ladder, each step more painful than the last.

But today, the Lightning are standing tall.

One nemesis vanquished, and three to go. Four victories down, and 12 to go.

A thousand-pound weight lifted from their backs, and tons still to go.

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Close the curtains on the first stop of the Lightning’s 2020 tour of redemption - Tampa Bay Times
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