Commentary | Bolts victory makes statement: Be careful before you underestimate us
Tampa Bay's Game 7 win over the Rangers destroys a lot of falsehoods.
It wasn't just the way the Bolts dominated.
The idea that home ice is an advantage melted quicker than it took for the Lightning to establish their supremacy in Friday's 2-0 victory.
The Bolts won their third game in four tries at Madison Square Garden. At home, they were 1-2.
The naysayers should've known. In a seven-game series, you can throw out any perceived home advantage. During the regular season, one team is traveling while the other is sleeping in its bed and well-rested.
In a seven-game series, the teams know each other better than they know their loved ones or themselves. But there is more, as those who saw the Bolts as the Rangers' little brothers now know.
Tampa Bay may sleepwalk in games it doesn't need to win. But the Bolts have no doubt about their capabilities when faced with a must victory.
The Rangers scored 17 goals in three games at Amalie Arena and four in their four home games.
Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist was being compared to the Great Wall of China with a 6-0 record in Game 7s. He was impregnable, unbeatable, the soothsayers told us.
By Scotty, they were wrong.
Goalies have a major impact on a game, but they are not the sole reason a team tastes the fruits of victory.
King Henrik was under siege, stopping 23 shots. Many were quality shots, including that in-your-face highway robbery of Tyler Johnson. Lightning goalie Ben Bishop put his imprint on the game and held off a late Rangers push. He is not Lundqvist, but showed the Bolts they have no reason to cry wolf with two Game 7 shutouts this season.
You need a little help from your friends, and Lundqvist didn't get much with the Rangers scoring more goals in the third period of their Game 6 win than in four games at MSG.
The Bolts did bring back flashes of some memorable quotes that live infamy like Tug McGraw's "You Gotta Believe" and Rudy Tomanjanovich's "Never Underestimate the Heart of a Champion."
Regardless of whether they bring home the Stanley Cup, no one can question the Lightning's ability to rise to the occasion as so many did in the pregame diatribes that surrounded the sacred walls of MSG.
Lightning head coach Jon Cooper says his guys are too young and dumb to recognize what was against them.
He might be right, but this team has a lot going for itself as it moves ahead.
Lighting forwards Brian Boyle and Ryan Callahan and defenseman Anton Stralman made it to the Stanley Cup Finals last year with the Rangers, losing to Los Angeles in five games, and that experience is invaluable. Stralman is now 6-0 in Game 7s, Boyle is 5-0, and what they brought to this team is immeasurable.
In the end, it seems to be the intangibles that make these Bolts. They believe and their heart should never be underestimated.
Alan Dell, Herald sports writer, can be reached at 941-745-7056. Follow him on Twitter @ADellSports.
This story was originally published May 30, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Commentary | Bolts victory makes statement: Be careful before you underestimate us."