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Bright Lightning: Is Steve Yzerman Building a Dynasty in Tampa?

The New York Rangers may win this year, but the Tampa Bay Lightning are bound for glory in seasons to come thanks to playing a long game.
Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports

With the best regular season record, a Stanley Cup Finals appearance last year, one of the world's elite goaltenders, and a 1-0 series lead in the Eastern Conference Finals, the New York Rangers are undeniably on a roll.

General Manager Glen Sather has leveraged the future (the Rangers have had no first round picks in either of the last two drafts) to build a swaggering veteran roster in front of goaltender Henrik Lundqvist.

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While most of the NHL's dominant franchises—think Kings or Bruins— rely on player development and strong puck possession games, the Rangers have turned their noses up at both ideas. Yet here they are. However, don't expect the good times to last. While the Rangers may dispatch the Lightning this season, it's the team from Tampa that is on the path to long-term dominance.

The Lightning are the fourth-youngest team in the NHL, and their success is perhaps best summed up by their highest scoring line, the "Triplets Line," which features three players who are all 24 or younger: Ondrej Palat (drafted 208th overall, 2011) Nikita Kucherov (58th overall, 2011), and Tyler Johnson (undrafted because of his size, despite many accolades in his final year of juniors). This line has combined for more than half of the Lightning's 35 goals and 15 of 55 assists throughout the playoffs.

Head Coach Jon Cooper never played a game in the NHL and is the only remaining coach in the playoffs to never have done so. But ask around the league and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would speak ill of the 47-year old coach. Tampa Bay noticed his winning pedigree in various minor leagues and plucked him just months after GM Steve Yzerman was hired.

Steve Yzerman is as savvy off the ice as he was on it. Photo by Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Cooper talks to players on a human level, and is more concerned with building unity within the dressing room than hierarchy. Lightning sniper Tyler Johnson has said that Cooper is "…really good at communicating with the players. One of those guys that's just fun to play for." He's not afraid of breaking the stereotype of a tough-as-nails coach either.

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His roster features just one player whose name has been on the Stanley Cup, Valterri Flippula. Otherwise, it is comprised of players with chips on their shoulders like gritty forward Brian Boyle, defensive stalwart Anton Stralman, and goaltender Ben Bishop, who is quickly rising to the ranks of the league's elite netminders.

All three were deemed expendable by their former teams (in Stralman and Boyle's case that team was the Rangers) and are locked up into next season for reasonable salaries. The Lightning have rarely made the kind of splash on overrated players during summer free agency that can sink teams for years to come.

Some questioned Yzerman for going after Ben Bishop in a 2013 trade, giving up a high-scoring prospect in Cory Conacher for a lanky goalie with only 36 NHL games on his resume spread over four seasons, with no better than a 2.45 GAA during that time.

Bishop has grown into his frame. He's posted impressive 1.81 GAA and .950 save percentage throughout these playoffs, second only to Lundqvist. Of course, Bishop's success is not nearly as paramount to Tampa Bay's overall chances as Lundqvist's are to the Rangers.

Ben Bishop has solidified the crease for Tampa. Photo by Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports.

But since the 2005 NHL lockout, only two Stanley Cup winning goaltenders were nominated for the Vezina Trophy. Good goalies can probably steal one or two but placing that sort of onus on a netminder is not necessarily a recipe to success.

Rather, one needs balance, and one needs puck possession. The Lightning finished with the fourth-best 5-on-5 Corsi For Percentage in the regular season, eclipsing the Rangers who finished a distant 20th. Since Cooper replaced Guy Boucher as Lightning coach their possession numbers have improved dramatically, from 47.2 perecent at the end of 2013 (during which Cooper bumped up those numbers significantly after being hired late in the season) to 53 percent this regular season.

Regardless of how far the Lightning advance in this year's playoffs, they've put the rest of the league on notice. After getting swept by the Montreal Canadiens last season, they conquered them this year and are looking like the legitimate contenders for seasons to come.