Lessons learned from Cup loss will aid Lightning in defense of East title

TORONTO – Every player is different when dealing with a losing in the Stanley Cup Final. If you’re Victor Hedman of the Tampa Bay Lightning, you’ve put last June’s loss to the Chicago Blackhawks out of your mind and are looking forward as the 2015-16 season begins in a month.

If you’re Steven Stamkos, you never forget.

“I don’t think, unless you actually win a Stanley Cup, I don’t know if you’ll ever actually be over it knowing how close you were,” Stamkos said during the NHL Players Media Tour this week. “I think you’re over the initial shock of the season just ending as abruptly as it did after going through so much together as a team – mentally, physically, the amount of work you put in to get there.

It was Stamkos’ first trip to the Final in his career and with the Lightning returning almost the exact same group for the '15-16 season, the six-game loss will serve as a learning experience.

“Obviously, it didn’t go the way that we wanted it to go, but we learned a lot about what it takes to win at this level,” Stamkos said. “You can’t just expect to be there again. I’ve been deep in the playoffs before and not made the playoffs the next year. Nothing’s given to you. You have to dig a little deeper. You’re not going to surprise anyone this year. That’ll be the goal for us, to get into the playoffs.”

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Heading into this season the Lightning are co-betting favorites in the Eastern Conference with the New York Rangers, the team they beat in seven games in the Conference Final. GM Steve Yzerman didn't make many personnel changes over the summer, with the only major move swapping out the unsigned Brenden Morrow with his younger, more productive replacement in Erik Condra.

Other East favorites like the Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals and Montreal Canadiens saw some old faces go and welcomed in some new ones in hopes of changing their fortunes in 2016. Sometimes fresh blood can be good for a team. But in the Lightning’s case, they’re plenty happy to keep the group intact.

“To have that consistency and to have pretty much the same team is a lot of fun,” said Hedman. “Losing a guy like Mo is tough, but we have to move forward from that. The addition of Condra is going to help.”

“If you look at our roster the past couple of years there’s been a lot of new faces," said Stamkos. "Heddy and I are the only ones still here from our rookie years, respectively. There has been a lot of turnover. When you finally find a group that works as well as we did together, and now gained that experience together, the management and ownership know that we have something good here.

“Sometimes when you get so close you think we still need a couple pieces and then things don’t go quite the way you wanted them to go. Steve Yzerman’s a smart guy and he’s going to assess how things go at the beginning of the season. If they’re going great like they were last year and you make a couple moves at the deadline and they pay off, it’s great. I think that’s his approach. I think it shows the level of confidence in us as players that they believe in this group and that’s a reassuring feeling.”

Yzerman may have had a quiet summer, but he’ll be busy over the next 12 months attempting to keep the Lightning a contender for years to come. Along with Stamkos’ extension, which is priority no. 1, Alex Killorn and Triplet Nikita Kucherov are set to become restricted free agents, along with J.T. Brown, Vladimir Namestnikov, and Cedric Paquette. And while it’s not an immediate concern, Hedman is scheduled to hit the UFA market in the summer of 2017.

So while Yzerman constructs Stamkos’ new deal he has to keep an eye on the future, and depending on how the NHL's salary cap ceiling rises or falls, some hard decisions may need to be made about key members of his group. The Lightning players realize that.

“We know how the business works, just look at Chicago,” said Hedman. “If you have a successful team it’s going to be tougher to keep everyone. It’s important for us to keep all these distractions outside the locker room.

"I think we did a good job last year with keeping everything inside the room, not focusing too much on what’s going on around.”

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Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Sean_Leahy

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