"We told our guys, don't let this get away," Jon Cooper was shouting, hoarsely, into an NBC microphone minutes after his Lightning shut down the Canadiens, 1-0, to claim a second consecutive Stanley Cup championship Wednesday night in Tampa, Fla. "There's the cap, expansion ... you're never going to have this group together again. Get it done."
They did. Again.
And what a scene it wound up being ...
... this time, unlike a year ago in the isolation of the Edmonton bubble, in front of actual humans.
"That's what makes this special," Steven Stamkos would say. "To do this here, in front of our family, our friends, our fans."
Good for them. Good for all concerned.
I'm not here to pile onto the cap circumvention debate when Julien BriseBois was guilty only of legally exploiting an existing loophole. That's on Gary Bettman.
I'm definitely not here to put forth comparisons to the Penguins of 2016 and 2017, the only other back-to-back champs in the cap era. One team won it all twice, and the other team won it all twice.
No, among my first thoughts in this aftermath was what comes next for these Bolts. As in, can they do it yet again?
Stamkos will turn 32 during the 2021-22 NHL season, but the rest of this core ... wow: Nikita Kucherov's 28, Viktor Hedman's 30, Brayden Point's 25, and the legitimately great Andrei Vasilevskiy's still only 27. And all are signed for the foreseeable future except for Point, who'll be retained as a restricted free agent.
A few losses will occur, as Cooper suggested. Ondrej Palat, Patrick Maroon and Jan Ruutta will be unrestricted free agents. Tyler Johnson's a perfect candidate to be shipped off to Seattle to absorb his $5 million cap hit. And BriseBois won't be able to finagle the cap over the offseason, where more cuts than these will need to come.
But overall ... man, there's no chance anyone else could be favored in the reformed Eastern Conference this fall.
YOUR TURN: Which team, including the local one, might be best positioned to knock off the Bolts?