Joseph gains motivation from watching brother lift Stanley Cup

"It was basically just screaming."

That's what Penguins prospect Pierre-Olivier Joseph said the first phone conversation was like with older brother Mathieu Joseph on Monday night after watching him hoist the Stanley Cup with the Lightning in the Edmonton bubble.

Mathieu, 23, is a forward in his third year in the Lightning organization. He didn't play in a game this postseason, but since he played in more than half of Tampa's 70 regular season games (37), he meets the requirements to have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup.

"The first thing you say is, 'That's unbelievable,'" Pierre-Olivier told me of what he finally said after the screaming died down. "Even though he didn't play a game in the postseason, being there with the guys for that long and playing almost 40 games this year, it's a great moment for him to see his teammates win. But the fact that he was there the entire time with a smile on his face, not complaining about it, it's a great leadership model that I saw from him. It was a lot of screaming, a lot of smiles. I basically told him to go enjoy the moment for sure."

Pierre-Olivier, 21, said that he watched the game at home in Quebec by himself, since their parents Frantzi and France were in Edmonton with Mathieu. He said that it was easy to follow where his brother was on the ice during the celebrations over the television broadcast because it was

"For me, it's hard to miss in the pictures," he said with a laugh. "He stood out with his big afro. It's good to see a big afro like that, he stuck out from everybody else. It's him. It's his personality. He's so outgoing, it's great to see that."

 For Pierre-Olivier, watching his brother lift the Cup was a surreal moment -- and makes him even more motivated to raise it himself one day.

"Everyone dreams of it, but it's super hard," he said. "Two years ago, nobody would have imagined him lifting the Cup right now. It's surreal. I don't know how long this feeling is going to last, but I'm sure it's going to last awhile for him. It's something that everyone dreams of their entire life. To see my brother doing it last night was unforgettable for me. I can't even imagine the feeling that he had and what he was going through there with my parents there also. It was great to see. It just makes you want to lift it as well."

A lot of that extra motivation comes from wanting to give their parents another moment like they experienced on Monday night.

"It's a great moment for my parents as well, being able to go up there and be that close for it," Pierre-Olivier said. "We want to do this for our organizations and we want to do it for ourselves, but at the end of the day we really want to do it for our parents who sacrificed so much for our entire lives to get us to where we are right now. It's cliche, but we wouldn't be here without them. It's a little more motivation to see how happy they were yesterday."

Pierre-Olivier wasn't able to be there in-person last night to celebrate, but the two brothers were at least able to spend some time together during the qualifying round, since the Penguins and Lightning were staying in the same hotel in the Toronto bubble.

"We had the chance to hang out a little bit," he said. "We basically told each other that we wanted to have a sushi night and catch up. It's great to see him, that's why my parents went. My dad was basically like, 'You know what, I don't want to see anybody else except my son,'  because it's been seven months since they saw each other."

Celebrations with the Stanley Cup are bound to look a little different this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Lightning are holding one celebration in Tampa on Wednesday, with a boat parade and a rally in the Buccaneers' stadium with fans socially distanced in their seating. And if players each get their own day with the Cup, there probably won't be the big parties that typically happen every summer. At least one part of the celebrations will remain the same though: For players like Pierre-Olivier who haven't won the Cup themselves yet, superstition says that it's bad luck to touch it.

"Oh, I'm not touching it," he laughed. "For sure."