TAMPA, Fla. _ The temperature outside has passed stifling and is approaching cruel. It is mid-July, and this is the original pre-existing condition known as Florida.
Yet inside Amalie Arena the air is cool and Lightning goaltending coach Frantz Jean is shoveling ice in front of the net between drills. If the timing and scene feel incongruous, no one is complaining.
Yes, the 2019-20 NHL season is back. Sort of.
The history logs will say the hockey season resumed Monday, but that's just for bookkeeping purposes. What's happening here is not the continuation of a story put on pause. Friends, this is a sequel.
Same channel and same stars, but the plot has changed and the location will, too. There is no way a season can go on hiatus this long, and expect to pick up where it left off.
You know what you call a four-month break in hockey?
The offseason.
That's not a complaint, mind you. If it's been reassuring to watch baseball and soccer players back on fields in the summertime, it's an overdue bonus to watch hockey games in our shorts and flip-flops.
And Monday not only brought us two separate hour-long sessions of Lightning workouts, but also a reassuring appearance in between by banged-up Tampa Bay icon Steven Stamkos. For a moment, it was as if the coronavirus never happened and the season never paused.
But, of course, we know better. We know the number of positive COVID-19 tests in Florida continues to rise and we know the NHL's plan to herd 24 hockey teams in Toronto and Edmonton is fraught with potential complications.
And if we're being honest with ourselves, we should also know that Tampa Bay's chances of winning a Stanley Cup are probably less attractive today than they were on March 14.
That has nothing to do with the talent on the roster (which is still elite) or the coaching in the box (which is still stellar). It has more to do with the vagaries of a quick restart, and the possibility that misfortune or fluke could have an outsized influence in determining 2020's champion.
"This is going to be the hardest Stanley Cup ever to win" Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois said. "It's going to be a memorable Stanley Cup playoff for a number of reasons. I don't think in any way the integrity of the competition has been compromised."
Reasonable people can debate the notion of competitive integrity, but it's hard to imagine outside circumstances won't play some role in the postseason. Talent will still be the most important factor, but it must now share the stage with illness, quarantine, neutral sites, layoffs, homesickness and chemistry. The best teams will still be the favorites, but there will be more road hazards along the way.
"There's challenges in every season whether there's a pandemic or not. These ones are just completely different and unchartered" Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "The challenges, there's a laundry list of them. We're going to play games without fans, we're going to a restricted area where we won't have a lot of outside contact with other people. It's not going to be the norm of going to the restaurant of your choice, there's daily testing. I can be here all day listing challenges, and they're challenges you've never had to experience before."
More than anything is the lack of continuity. Or focus. Or momentum. The season is supposed to gradually build over six months to a crescendo in the spring. We were told last year the Lightning weren't the same team in the postseason because they had clinched so early and had gone so long without meaningful hockey games.
So how do you reconcile this?
The Lightning will get fewer than two weeks of workouts in Tampa before heading to Toronto, where they will have three round-robin games prior to the first round of the playoffs.
"I think it's difficult to do, but mentally you have to find a way to do it," forward Alex Killorn said. "The (round-robin) games for the standings are definitely valuable, and more valuable is getting yourself ready for the actual playoffs to begin."
Forget what the Lightning did from October to March. Forget that they were on their way to another 100-point season, and forget that Stamkos has had time to heal from surgery, get injured again and hopefully be healthy by Aug. 3.
Forget everything about the 2019-20 season.
Instead, look at this as an opportunity. An extremely talented team with potentially four rounds of playoff hockey in front of it and history waiting on the other side.
