BUBBLE BOYS: Oral history of the Lightning’s 2020 COVID Cup run
It’s winter 2020. The NHL is more than halfway through its season, the All-Star Game and Trade Deadline in the rearview mirror, the playoff races heating up. In the background, however, the drumbeat of some concerning world news gets louder. Reports emerge of a deadly virus originating in Wuhan, China and rapidly spreading around the world. By January, cases of COVID-19, then known colloquially as the coronavirus, are known to exist on North American soil. Fear over controlling it in large, crowded environments, or “superspreader” events, leads to talk of pausing or shutting down major pro sports leagues.
Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Lightning are hellbent on winning the Stanley Cup, having been swept in the first round the previous season by the Columbus Blue Jackets despite tying an NHL record at the time with 62 victories. The Bolts have gone all-in at the Trade Deadline, having used first-round picks to acquire Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow in February. The thought of pausing the season is crushing. Is the COVID-19 threat for real?
TYLER JOHNSON, CENTER: We heard about what was going on. At first we were worrying about the virus when we were in Cabo for our bye week in February. They were saying it’s going to be a pandemic, all these things are going to happen. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy. What the heck is this?”
STEVEN STAMKOS, CENTER: The days and weeks leading up, it was starting to become worldwide news, whether it was TV coverage or social media coverage of this thing that we didn’t really know. People were getting sick in Europe, and we were just thinking it would never get to a point where it affected anyone here, or if it did, it was just going to be very minor – we obviously never experienced anything like that before our lifetime.
ANTHONY CIRELLI, CENTER: There’s stuff going on around the world, obviously started not in America. Was it going to make its way to us? And you saw people were scared. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. There was talk of maybe shutting [the NHL)] down. In the preliminary days it was, “maybe for a couple weeks just until it goes away.”
RYAN MCDONAGH, DEFENSEMAN: Other leagues were shutting down, the NBA and whatnot. And we were wondering, what, are we going to be next in line?
JOHNSON: I remember we were watching the basketball game [March 11, Utah Jazz vs. Oklahoma City Thunder] and that was when it got shut off halfway through the game and then their game got cancelled.
The fateful news drops March 12, 2020. The NHL announces it will “pause” the season, which only has 189 total games left between its 31 teams, due to safety concerns over the coronavirus. All games, practices and meetings stop immediately and indefinitely.
JON COOPER, HEAD COACH: We were supposed to play Philadelphia. Morning skate, we all show up, business as usual. Players usually start rolling in around 9:00 a.m., and we have a 10:00 a.m. meeting, and by the time that 10:00 a.m. meeting happened, we went from thinking we were playing the game to, is there a chance this might get postponed, to the season being postponed, the entire league, in a matter of minutes.
JOHNSON: We thought we were going to have a morning skate, but we get there and there wasn’t one guy in our locker room. Everyone was in our medical office, and we went in there and started talking and everyone said, “No, our games are going to be cancelled. They don’t know what’s going on. We’re not allowed to go on the ice for pre-game skate. Everyone has to go home right away.” So we went home.
COOPER: There wasn’t fear, it was just, there was uncertainty. And I guess uncertainty can inspire a bunch of different emotions, but the one thing was, we were told it’s going be more than a couple days.
VICTOR HEDMAN, DEFENSEMAN: We were on a pretty good run at the time as well. Then we came home [from a road trip], and all of a sudden everything got cancelled. We didn’t really know what to do.
Much of the globe and the pro sports world shuts down in hopes of containing the pandemic. The Lightning players wait at home, unsure of what the future will bring, with no idea when they’ll play again.
ANDREI VASILEVSKIY, GOALTENDER: I wouldn’t use the word scared, but uncertain, for sure. We were just standing by and hoping for the best.
MCDONAGH: Just a lot of wondering, “what if,” trying to figure out where your life was going to go.
STAMKOS: Most guys probably didn’t expect to play at all that year. Nor did they really want to just based on the fact we didn’t know much about COVID, you know? Our first son was born prior to COVID, he wasn’t even a year, and you didn’t know how kids were going to react if they got it, so we were being extra cautious.
The Lightning hold the Eastern Conference’s second-best record at the time of the shutdown and know they have a lot to lose, so they do everything they can to remain in game shape in case there’s any chance the 2019-20 season resumes.
MCDONAGH: Our group was really hoping there was a scenario where we could come back and play, because we had such a good team and a good group of guys and a good chance to win.
HEDMAN: It was hard because we couldn’t really be together. But I was lucky, I had a little gym in my house and tried to do as much as I could. We did some Zooms, I think it was yoga or Pilates. It was trying to reinvent the wheel a little bit and to do whatever we could to be in shape.
MCDONAGH: Guys were just kind of working out of their own. And in Florida we were able to go outside and go for a run and stuff like that with the weather being nice, so that was a huge advantage, I would say, as opposed to other teams, other places where it was winter and whatnot and you were really stuck inside.
STAMKOS: it was really [Lightning GM] Julien BriseBois that was the driving force of, “No, we’re gonna come back and play,” and I think part of that was he had just spent two first-rounders on Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman to bring them in right before [COVID] went down. And he’s probably thinking, “What a waste that would be if we didn’t even get a chance to play in the playoffs.” So the staff was really on the guys about, “Hey, keep up your training, keep up your fitness, I think we’re gonna play.”
COOPER: If you were gonna tell me it would last four months, I would’ve had a whole different mentality. But there was so much uncertainty of how long the break was going to go for. And we had only 12 games left. So, yes, our motivation was a little different than other teams’, there was no question, our urgency to come back and play. We had a lot of unfinished business. And we felt we had a great trade deadline, we were just molding and our team was coming together, and then everything stops. So I was very on the players about training. We had our strength guys set up a gymnast’s garage, and all the guys would go over there at certain times. We were very rule compliant, and guys could use those certain times, but we did everything in our power to make sure our guys had everything they could use to keep training, so hopefully if this season started, we know we would not miss a beat.
Determined to complete the NHL season in a safe manner, the NHL begins a brainstorming process, led by Steve Mayer, their czar of all major events, on a scenario in which the season could play out in a quarantined ‘Bubble,’ with teams living round the clock in that controlled environment.
STEVE MAYER, NHL PRESIDENT OF CONTENT & EVENTS: We felt there could be a chance, I think originally, that everything would blow over, which, now that we know, how dare we, but, “This will just blow over and we’ll be able to go back to our arenas, we’ll be able to go back to play.” So there was that time period. And then there was a time period of, “Well, this is really bad. There’s just no way. What are we even thinking about here?”
And so how do you make the environment as safe as it could be, as entertaining as it could be to fans? Because, during that period of time, man, we were it, people [in lockdown] watched sports. It was that one thing that brought everybody together. Sports on TV, that was a big deal, right? It didn’t matter what time you were playing, because people were home. That’s where we really started to think, OK, what are we going to do? And, what could we do a little different and better than all the other leagues that are out there, because we’re all sort of on equal footing right now.
You saw the Bubble concept come up with all the sports, and everybody did it a little differently in the end. We are all watching these one-off events start to pop up, like Bundesliga soccer and Korean baseball, and you started to watch how they were doing it and how could we mimic it.
VASILEVSKIY: It was pretty unusual just to hear that word, Bubble. We were like, “How can it work?”
JOHNSON: We were on the phone, it seemed like nearly every day, every other day, with the NHLPA, with the league. They were updating [Johnson and Alex Killorn, fellow Lightning PA rep] and then it was our job to try to update the team. But I remember leaving our last meeting with [then-NHLPA executive director] Don Fehr and those guys basically saying, “No, this isn’t going to work right now. There’s too much stuff in the air. There’s no way this is going to happen. We’re still a ways away, yada, yada, etc.” And then I sent that to the team, the whole paraphrase of everything that went on in that two-hour meeting. And then later that night we get a text saying, “Hey, we’re going to go to the Bubble. This is all going to work now.”
The concept, announced by the NHL in a late-May press conference: a 24-team event, beginning with the top four teams in each conference playing round-robin games to determine seeding, while the lower eight seeds in each conference compete in play-in rounds to determine a true playoff field of 16. The tournament will commence Aug. 1, with the conferences divided into two Bubbles in two NHL cities.
As the Lightning, along with 23 other NHL franchises, digest the fact they’ll be heading into the Bubble, the conversations at home aren’t necessarily easy. Any team that goes all the way to the Stanley Cup Final will leave loved ones at home for more than two months.
MCDONAGH: Family wise, you know you’re going to be gone potentially up to 80 days if you kept going all the way. How are we going to feel there, not being able to see our family in person and be around them?
COOPER: We were in Florida. The rules were much looser in that state than most other places, especially Canada. Plus we had the water and the beach. This is going to sound a little crazy, but it was a phenomenal time for me. My kids were young. We got to stay at the beach for three months, and it was just us. And I ask my kids to this day, what is their greatest memory of Anna Maria Island, and the only answer is, “when we got to spend three months together during COVID.” So as a hockey coach who’s not around his family a ton, it was phenomenal for me. We did that and then we went to Idaho, which is another state that was looser than some others. And that’s the place that we summer. It was family bonding time for all of us. That’s what made it harder to go back, because it’s going to break up the time we had together. In saying that, everybody wanted to go back. Everybody wanted to play.
Not that it would be easy to reach the Bubble. Travel, particularly of the commercial variety, proves a massive hurdle due to all the COVID protocols, especially for players arriving from outside North America. The Lightning have to jump through hoops to successfully reunite in Florida for their pre-Bubble mini camp.
STAMKOS: There was legitimate thought that Hedman wasn’t going to come. I know they had to work with some government officials, because his wife was pregnant. He didn’t want to leave her. They tried to get his in-laws or his parents from Sweden to come down to stay with her while we were in the Bubble. And Sweden wasn’t allowing any travel. There was some crazy stuff that went on behind the scenes to allow guys to feel comfortable to leave their families, especially if they had a pregnant wife or young kids like we had. We had to make sure people were comfortable, and not just the players but the families, too.
HEDMAN: We had FP2 visas, so that was fine, working wise, but yeah, it was a lot of logistics to get back to the States. But we made it work. It was a bunch of [European NHLers] going back, so, we were able to get some private planes and just load them up with as many players as you could. And then, you landed in New York and, from there, everyone went their separate ways to the different cities. Coming back was way harder than going back to Sweden, that’s for sure.
JOHNSON: The way we got down to Florida: a friend of mine had a plane that lives up here [in Idaho]. And they’re actually from Florida as well, in Tampa. And I said, “Hey, we actually have to go back and play now in this Bubble, but we can’t fly commercial.” Otherwise you have to take a week off in the camp, leave your house, and you can’t drive, even if you just slept in your car the whole time, they won’t allow it. So we’re like, “We need a private plane. That’s literally the only way. Otherwise you have a week off of doing nothing. That’s not going to be a good way to go into camp.” Coop was up here, and then Braydon Coburn, I believe he was in Montana or something. He was pretty close to us, so he ended up driving over to us, and then we all got on the plane and flew together down there.
In late July, the teams migrate into the two Bubble complexes. One is based in Edmonton, overseen by Mayer, the other in Toronto, overseen by Dean Matsuzaki, NHL vice-president of NHL events.
MAYER: We were going to go to Vancouver and Vegas. And then there was an outbreak in both those areas. We always maintained that we were going to go to the safest place possible. We had found out, at that time, Toronto and Edmonton had the lowest amount of cases of any place in North America. And that’s why we ended up going there. When we got there, along with a fence company, we really mapped out what was our interior and what was on the exterior. We had an idea, but until we saw it and physically were able to walk the area, we didn’t know exactly how it was all going to turn out.
COOPER: We didn’t find out until the very end how things were going to be and how loose was it going to be or how tight was it going to be. There was just so much unknown to it. That probably made it a little bit unnerving, but [at least] everybody was going to be doing it. Plus there was a little bit of intrigue because we knew it was just going to be the teams and staff. There wasn’t going to be family, friends, media. It was just the people in the trenches. The biggest thing for us was, who would be the 52 people that got to go? And there were people we’re really close with in the organization that didn’t get to go.
The NHL establishes elaborate compounds designed to ensure the players have access to sufficient entertainment, food and exercise during their time in the Bubbles. Each location is equipped with 14 restaurants and a concierge service for deliveries from outside vendors. The Lightning are stationed in Toronto; the Bubble there includes Hotel X and BMO Field, home of Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC and the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts.
COOPER: The four teams with the best records stayed at Hotel X. Great hotel. And it was completely remote, but we had access, we could walk BMO field. We had so much more going for us – where the other teams stayed, they would have to take a bus, and there was a lot more to it for them to get out of their hotel. They couldn’t just walk to BMO field even though they had access to it.
So right out of the gate, it was a little easier for some teams than it was for others.
STAMKOS: Hotel X was a thousand times better set up than the West Bubble. They did a fantastic job. We had BMO field that we had that access to. That was blocked off from the public, so we could walk over there at any time. They usually had something playing on that big screen, whether it was another playoff game or movie or whatever. They had multiple different restaurant setups, kind of pop-up restaurants, in that stadium. It was a nice time of year, so you go out there and you throw the football around and the frisbee or Spikeball or soccer, guys throwing the baseball, whiffle ball, you name it. That was probably the best feature in terms of being able to get outside, get some fresh air and take your mind off things.
VASILEVSKIY: We were connected to that soccer stadium. So, yeah, we had an opportunity to use that stadium, play some games. I watched some hockey, too, on the jumbo screen. Inside the hotel was a very good setup, too. We had tennis courts, ping pong tables. Everybody brought some kind of devices, like iPads or laptops.
STAMKOS: In the hotel, they had pickleball courts, tennis courts, they had golf simulators, they had an arcade room, so many different activities.
CIRELLI: We got lucky on the Toronto side of it. We had a couple restaurants we could go to. I pretty much was just playing cards. Some guys brought video game systems and had a group going, but I’d say mostly for us we were just playing cards all the time.
MCDONAGH: There was a rooftop restaurant at the stadium, or you could order in. It was just nice to not have the same limited options every time. You try keep your mind focused, when it was game day and practice day, you get the work done that you need to be ready for the next game. But you also try to enjoy it as much as you can with what you have around you. So having that stadium there was huge and being able to play games and hang out with the guys definitely made a lot of great memories.
DEAN MATSUZAKI, NHL EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT OF EVENTS: For the teams themselves, we did spend a fair bit of time and energy coming up with programming for them: golf outings, going over to Commonwealth Stadium [in Edmonton] to kick the football around. We did some kayaking here in Toronto as well. It was good to keep it fresh. They weren’t just sitting in the room all day, that’s for sure.
COOPER: The other thing was, at our hotel, that group of teams, we played each other in a round-robin just to go for seeding, so we weren’t getting knocked out of the Bubble, whereas all the other teams, their games were meaningful instantly. So they’re right in the rat race, and we’re still figuring things out, having a little bit of fun, there’s no stress in what we’re doing. That was a definite advantage but an advantage we earned, because through 72 games, we had more points than other teams, so we were in the right to have that spot.
To ensure the virus doesn’t spread in the Bubble and prevent games from happening, the NHL enforces a rigorous daily testing protocol.
MAYER: Goal No. 1 was to keep everybody healthy. Players, people who worked there, we also needed a significant amount of workers who were game workers who came. We had the Bubble very protected. And we were taskmasters when we were inside the Bubble: six feet away, mask on all the time, nobody could go into anybody else’s room. I could speak to Edmonton: we were tough, and I’m not normally like that. But I got pretty demonstrative and told everybody, our No. 1 concern, we certainly didn’t want to get any of the players sick, because one player would lead to all players. And we always felt that was so important. So we tested multiple times a day. We really were diligent in working things out.
CIRELLI: We all have to do it. I remember those days when you got a scare, you go get the thing up your nose. But was it extra intense because you had to do it so many times. I think it was twice a day. We would have to before we entered the facility, we would have to get one before we left the hotel, we’d have to get tested every single day. Right when you woke up, first thing you had to do was go down and get tested. And it was the one that went all the way up your nose, which hurt a bit. But by the end of it, it was just routine, right? Go down there, get it done and make sure it’s all safe so you go out and play. I don’t think there was any positive test.
MAYER: There was an incident at the beginning where somebody tried to sneak out, and we caught him and sent him home. And that actually was tremendous that he tried, because that stopped anybody else from even trying to play with it.
It’s time to play the games, and the experience is, to say the least, unique. With no fans, the NHL brainstorms a way to simulate the sound and feel of a proper playoff atmosphere. That includes pumping artificial crowd noise and music into the arena, using more cameras than normal and installing LED screens to feature graphics and spice up the viewing experience on broadcasts. It takes some getting used to.
MAYER: We did have the benefit of having watched a few other leagues’ games take place before we ever played our first game. So we knew that some had experimented with crowd noise. We knew that some had experimented with the cardboard cutouts in the stands. There were certain things that we thought worked and some things, maybe not so much.
We wanted the simulated crowd noise. We thought it would add an element in the arena and it would get the players a bit more motivated. So we had a couple of pre-season games before we got going, and we told the players, “Hey, we’re going to play the noise at different levels.” They were like, “Go for it.” And we didn’t think [worry] about it then at all. In fact, they said their energy level felt better. So we went with it because we did like it. We thought it would help the TV broadcast.
JOHNSON: Our first taste of it was our training camp in Tampa. We simulated a couple games. We did pre-game skating in the morning, we actually had to go home, nap, do all our stuff, get ready for games, and then they did the different game time slots, because in the Bubble we had different slots than you normally do in regular playoffs because they tried to get everyone to play on those days. So I remember us thinking, “Okay, this is stupid, we can do this, we’ve done this our whole lives. And when we were doing it and we started playing those games, like, “Geez, this is weird.” The fake crowd noise, lights are going on, and it really was awkward. You can hear the coaches yell a lot more, you can hear guys yelling for pucks, and it was weird.
COOPER: For the first period, for one period only, in our first game, it was unbelievably awkward. I was like, “Holy cow, how is this gonna go?” And I commend the NHL, because the way they made music inside of the arena, they gave everything in their power, like funneling in crowd noise, and stuff like that, to make it as intimate as they possibly could, to make it a really cool game environment. But in the end, part of what makes hockey phenomenal is 20,000 fans going crazy. So when you lost that, it was awkward. Ironically, it only lasted for a period, because, and I guess that’s why we all love the sport, these players were so competitive, they just wanted to win. So when they said, “Okay, there’s no crowd here, it’s not gonna really change how hard I’m gonna hit you or how I’m gonna put this in the net, or how I’m gonna backcheck,” the crowd didn’t have anything to do with that.
MCDONAGH: It was definitely a weird feeling, something I hope I don’t have to experience again. Because, not having the energy in the building made the games less intense than they usually are. The pace of the game, as you went further in the playoffs, that kind of felt the same, but the intensity, the energy, I would almost say the momentum swings, you didn’t really feel it as much. If you were to score a goal and be with your home crowd, you definitely feel the momentum being on your side. You didn’t really have that feeling there because it wasn’t really like a home or away game. It was almost an even playing field that way where you just have focus in and build your own energy. Sometimes you get caught up in the crowd and the energy in the playoffs and you didn’t have to deal with that, the good or the bad.
CIRELLI: You could hear more stuff going on the ice specifically during the play. You hear guys a little bit louder, calling for pucks or when you communicate amongst players. You couldn’t hear the other bench, but trash talking across was a little bit easier.
COOPER: The chirping that goes on in the ice that people aren’t privy to, you got to hear it all. And honestly, it was hilarious some of the time. Not only what your players would say, but what the other team’s players would say. You’re like, “Oh my God, that is hilarious.”
CIRELLI: The weirdest thing for me personally was the TV timeouts and how you could almost hear a pin drop in the arena when the game wasn’t being played. There’s no fans, and you’re kind of looking around at TV time, saying nothing, and it’s very quiet.
COOPER: One thing I really liked about it – it wasn’t listening to the other team, it was you could finally hear what was happening on your bench. What people don’t understand is, the second the game isn’t going on, there’s lights, and there’s in-game entertainment, and it is so loud with the music, you can’t hear what’s going on in your bench. And it’s extremely frustrating for a coach. And so, you have to lean into guys’ ears, you can’t have group chats or anything like that, or it’s very hard to. And I found that, when there were no fans there, you actually got to talk to your team, everybody could hear you.
JOHNSON: We had that little playoff round-robin thingy or whatever, pre-seeding for us. And it took us those three games to understand, like, “Alright, this is just how things are.” Those games weren’t as serious for us because that was just for seeding, we took those a little bit easier, but once the real playoffs came, that’s when you kind of buckle down and you’re like, “Screw it, I don’t care about the noise, the lack of fans or anything, we’re here to play a game.”
MAYER: We had these LED screens that became a huge part of the production, the presentation, the telecast. At first, we were told by our hockey operations folks, “Do not have anything on those screens that moves. Nothing should be animated.” And then we started doing it and asked the players if they caught their eye or if it bothered them, and the answer was absolutely not. And so we started to do more and more of that as the event went on. So you’d see some of the player goal animations and the team animations and all that.
VASILEVSKIY: It was weird the first few games. But then it was like, we were so focused on our goal that we didn’t care anymore. It was the same game, same emotions, and same intensity throughout the playoffs. I still remember I experienced some of the best emotions during the Bubble games even though we had no fans.
STAMKOS: Once the puck drops, guys aren’t trying any less because there’s one fan or 20,000 fans. The competitive juices kick in, you want to win. It was just more weird to watch it [while I was injured], but playing the games felt exactly the same.
VASILEVSKIY: Looking back that was probably the most, I guess, I’ll just say the most fair. There’s a lot of factors in the playoffs like travel, cross-country flights, but this was same arena, same ice, same conditions for everybody pretty much. It was really interesting. I hope there won’t ever be a situation like this again, but that was in my opinion the most even, most fair technical playoffs in history.
As days become weeks in the Bubble, the teams begin to settle into routines – even when those routines frequently include running into your playoff opponents, who are sharing a living space with you.
COOPER: There were three games going a day, plus you had the games going out west. You’d be surprised at what seemed like how little free time there really was in the Bubble, because the coaching staff was preparing, your team was preparing, and we watched a ton of games. There were always hockey games on, and then everything became a little bit routine as things went on. “Hey, we’re meeting for dinner at this time, we’re playing cards at this time, we got this game going.”
HEDMAN: Before every game, me and Kevin Shattenkirk used to play a game of NHL 20. So, you got these weird superstitions where, we kept winning and we kept doing the same things over and over again. ‘Shatty’ would get me coffee every morning. He was super into that as well. Having those superstitions and routines really helped mentally to narrow down what you had to do come game time.
MCDONAGH: We were definitely hanging out, seeing other teams, other guys. At one point, I think there were about 11 teams in there in Toronto, or eight teams or something like that. A lot of running into players, running into different teams and certainly having dinner at the same restaurant as some guys. It was important we were all in it together and trying to make sure we did the best we could with the scenario at hand.
JOHNSON: At the beginning I wouldn’t say it’s awkward because everyone’s there, they just want to have fun. There are some crazy parties, crazy things going on. But when you got into Conference Finals, we were waiting for so long that we weren’t taking losing. We had to win to make this worth it, otherwise it’s just all pointless. There were times it got a little awkward [with other teams].
CIRELLI: Especially early on, there’s maybe four or five teams sharing each hotel. So it’s weird, and you’re walking into elevators with these guys that you’re battling with now, seven-game series and you’re going against them, and it was just different. Everyone knew what this was, what we had to do to continue playing and finish up the season. There’s just an awkward couple elevator rides where you’re running up or down with the guy you’re playing against that night, but you’re all in the same boat.
JOHNSON: I remember after the [five-overtime] game against Columbus, riding the elevator with Seth Jones the next day, I just looked at him and started laughing because I knew him a little bit already. And it was just one of those things where you’re like, “What do you do?” I think Seth, that game, had over 60 minutes of ice time or something, he ended up losing. So you rib him on it a little bit.
You can have those intense games, intense times, but there are a lot of times where after games we’re all having a beer sitting together and just talking, getting ready for the next one. So it’s a good little camaraderie thing in hockey for sure.
As the weeks become months, and the Lightning prepare to join the Western Bubble for the later rounds of the playoffs, the entertainments become repetitive and players do whatever they can to stave off extreme boredom.
JOHNSON: We had screens and monitors, and we’re playing video games for a lot of the time as well. We played cards, a little bit of everything, but eventually everything was so boring.
VASILEVSKIY: I was just watching YouTube the whole day. Well, obviously we were practising, games, all walking around before dinner, after dinner. But at the end of the Bubble, I was like, “I feel like I will never watch YouTube again.” But I still watch it, though.
HEDMAN: On the off days, you tried to sleep in as much as you could and then make the day shorter. Do whatever we can to not get bored. You’re sick of being isolated like that.
JOHNSON: One of the funnest days we had was toward the end [of the Toronto leg] before we went to Edmonton. We were sitting at BMO Field, and there’s this window that looks into a parking lot. And there was a guy trying to teach a girl how to ride a bike. She was probably about 13, 14, 15. She wasn’t very good, but we all sat there and we were taking bets on how long she’s gonna stay on the bike until she falls off. And that was actually pretty fun. And it puts the Bubble in perspective. We a lot to do, but you’re missing the social aspect of new things all the time, so we are looking for anything.
COOPER: We were in Hotel X, so we had a really great situation. And we spent I think 45 days there. We won the first two rounds and we got to leave. And did we want to leave Hotel X? We did not. But the best thing was, we got to change our venue. We got to change everything. It broke up the monotony of what we were feeling when we were in the East. So when we went out West, it was all new to us. Whereas the teams in the West, they never got that. They had to stay in their same hotel.
Making it deep into the playoffs, defeating the New York Islanders in the Eastern Conference Final and meeting the Dallas Stars in the Stanley Cup Final, the Lightning surpass the two-month mark in the Bubble between the two cities. The extended isolation pushes their mental health to the brink at times, particularly for captain Steven Stamkos, who not only hasn’t played due to injury but has to deal with a family emergency outside the Bubble.
MCDONAGH: You were really homesick and really sad, really missing your kids and your wife and just your normal routine of having your own place, your own bed, your own house to live in.
CIRELLI: I think the middle of the run was probably the toughest part, between rounds. You’re just living the same day over and over and over again and not being able to see your family and not being able to leave. You want to get out and see something different, and you couldn’t.
STAMKOS: At one point when I left [to deal with a family emergency] and then I decided I was coming back, the team had already flown from Toronto to Edmonton, and I was still in Toronto with my wife, so I got on a plane from Toronto to Edmonton, the charter plane, because I don’t think there were many trips going on at that time, if any. So I met the team in Edmonton, and I had to quarantine in my room for four days by myself. I remember the team put in a stationary bike, I had some weights, I had some [resistance] bands, a yoga mat. Someone would come knock on the door, test me every day. I had someone delivering food to the room every day for me and I was doing Zoom call [injury] rehab protocol. I was doing my workouts. That was probably the toughest four days of the whole adventure, being in a hotel room and not being able to go anywhere.
MCDONAGH: We had a great staff, great group of guys you could lean on, and that was the one thing we said, from the get-go: if anybody starts having those feelings and thoughts, share it with somebody. We have a pretty great sports psychologist on staff and still with the Lightning: Ryan Hamilton. And he came on the road with us in the Bubble, too.
COOPER: Ryan was our mental performance guy. He’s still with us, and he’s doing Team Canada with me, and he did [the 4 Nations Face-Off], and he’s going to be doing the Olympics. He was very instrumental in how things went. He would have books flown in, or he would organize messages from family and put them in videos, and there were so many things he did for our group that kept it light for us. He kept our minds into it. If you could sit here and say, “What was that extra five percent the Lightning had going for them that maybe other teams didn’t?” I thought he was that extra five percent.
JOHNSON: I don’t know if people really understood, like, everyone thinks going to the Bubble was just a lot of fun and we did all these crazy things, but in a way it’s like a glorified jail cell. You’re stuck there, you can’t really do anything, you can pass time and talk, but you don’t have that normal connection. It really did break a lot of guys down, but thankfully for us, we had a really good team that was really close where we were leaning on each other, and Ryan in my mind is one of the greatest sports psych guys I’ve ever experienced. He just makes you feel at ease and just kind of gives you…whether it be a breathing exercise or something to jot down to think about or whatever it may be, he really did keep us all together. He brings a lot of comedic relief to things too, which is fun.
STAMKOS: I remember Ryan gave us all a book, and something that helped me get through those four days was reading the book. David Goggins is an ex-Navy SEAL who does all these crazy workouts and talks about mind over matter. There’s one book about him [Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet] where the CEO of a company [Jesse Itzler] somehow convinced David Goggins to come live with him for 30 days, probably paid him pretty handsomely, but I guess the only condition David Goggins said was, “I’ll come live with you for 30 days, but you have to do exactly everything I say with no questions asked,” and the guy did it. So the book is about him living with this crazy fanatic fitness mental coach for 30 days and the experience of it. That was a book Ryan handed out to everyone to read during this thing, and the message was more just the mental aspect of trying to get through this Bubble, this whole crazy situation, being away from friends and family, just trying to use the mental toughness aspect of it. And it was a good read as well.
MCDONAGH: I thought we did a great job of having some good meetings where we’d have an open forum and let guys talk, check in and share stuff about their family. And our wives were always sending pump-up videos for each playoff round, and guys were sharing photos of what’s going on back home, and it helped everybody get over that and deal with it.
JOHNSON: We had Yanni Gourde’s wife steal the show by shotgunning beers before every round while she’s on a boat.
Eventually, the Lightning get deep enough into the playoffs that the proximity to a championship trumps the anguish of being isolated.
COOPER: Now we’re in the Conference Final, so you’re locked in. Like, holy shit, we’re one series away from the Stanley Cup. You could feel it, how much the games meant. I don’t remember ever getting to a point where I’m like, “How can I hang on?” I don’t want this to end. It was, “Let’s dial in, boys, because we are so flipping close.”
CIRELLI: Once we got later in that third round there and ended up winning that round, you saw the light at the end of the tunnel. “We’ve just got to keep on going, we’re right there at our goal of winning a Stanley Cup, and we’re one round away.”
HEADMAN: You’re trying to fulfill a lifelong dream – in very different circumstances, obviously. But we didn’t want that year to go to waste.
VASILEVSKY: We were fortunate enough to play for the Cup. When you reach that point, you’re using the time to think about the game, and I was thinking a lot about it during the Bubble or after the Bubble. It wasn’t a great time for everybody [in the world], because of COVID. People at home basically had nothing to do. So I was thinking it was really important for us to win the Cup, just to bring some joy to our fans, to our city.
In the end, the 65 days of playoff hockey in the Bubble prove worth it. Stamkos makes it back from injury in time for one magical Game 3 in which he plays only 2:47 but manages to score a goal in his only game of the postseason, providing his team with a huge emotional lift. And Sept. 28, 2020, the Lightning defeat the Stars 2-0 in Game 6 to clinch the second Stanley Cup in franchise history. While Tampa goes on to win the following season as well, in its own home arena with fans, friends, family and media on hand, the Bubble championship celebration will always be unique in its intimacy. Which victory meant more, 2020 or 2021? It depends on which Lightning member you ask.
MCDONAGH: You had that absolute joy, no doubt. All the sacrifice, hard work that you put into it and all the people that helped you along the way, all those emotions and feelings and thoughts hit me as I dreamt they would if I were to ever win the Cup. So that part was very raw and very real.
I don’t think that would have changed had we won it under normal circumstances. But we had Pat Maroon with us who’d won it just one year before with the St. Louis Blues and talked about how, after they had the Cup and brought it back in the locker room, you got lost with so many family and friends and sponsors and all sorts of people down in the locker room. He’s like, this is actually really special just to have the group of guys enjoying the trophy and the Cup, pretty much all night to ourselves. He’s like, “This is totally not normal. When we won it, we had team pictures and carrying it individually on the ice and everything, and as soon as we went back to the room, we had maybe 10, 15 minutes on our own, coach giving the speech and whatnot. But after that, it was kind of an open-door policy and the Cup was kind of lost.” So he said it was great to soak this in just with the group of guys, before we went home and got to share it with family and friends.
COOPER: No team will ever get to experience what we did. We got the best of both worlds. Some of my greatest memories of the Stanley Cup happened just with that group of players and staff we were together with for 65 days. No interruptions. Nobody pulled in other directions. No distractions. It was the 65 days with the 52 people and it was like, we all got to exhale. It was as much fun as I’ve ever had in my life.
HEDMAN: It was just us, our track suits, being there forever, sitting in a hotel conference room, drinking champagne. I remember we went out on the balcony and there were a few workers downstairs and [McDonagh] was raising the Cup, and we got some cheers from them.
COOPER: And then to experience it the next year in 2021, the part I loved the most was being on the ice and listening to the fans and the building being packed. And when you raise the Cup, you’re doing it to an applause of 20,000 people and you feel the emotions come out of you. You didn’t get that in 2020 without fans there. That was cool in two different ways. But having the fans there made it extremely special. But the after party in 2021, as fun as it was, I don’t remember seeing three quarters of the players. And the only time you saw them was like, “Hey, are you leaving?” “Yeah, we’re gonna have a party, going here,” or whatever. And it made me cherish the year before even more because that wasn’t able to happen. It wasn’t the players’ fault. Everybody had so much family and friends around. That’s just the way it is.
JOHNSON: When we won it the first year, it was so special because of how hard the Bubble was, how mentally we had to battle through everything. And at the very end of it we just partied with each other. That was all we could do. So it was fun for that because you got to spend more time with the guys. We battled our asses off for however many days locked in a hotel, so that made it truly special and obviously it being our first one.
But I would say there was also a downside to that, because I remember as soon as we got off the ice, you have a little celebration, and it was crazy, but then 10 minutes in, everyone was in our changeroom, basically on their phone, FaceTime, calling family and friends. And that was kind of a sad thing, because the entire time they told us our family was going to be able to join us if we made the Conference Final and Stanley Cup Final. And unfortunately, that’s not what happened. So that was crappy because then that took about 20 or 30 minutes of everyone kind of being on their own, because they wanted to talk to all their family and friends.
STAMKOS: For me it’s an easier answer because of the circumstances between the two years and having played the full year the next year and played all the playoff games. Obviously as individual you feel like you had more of an impact, right? The second time is how I dreamt it as a kid, a full rink of fans, winning it in front of your home fans, in front of your Family, your wife, your kids, your parents are there, people had friends and family there.
HEDMAN: The next year was sold out Amalie Arena, my parents were there, friends, everyone was there. So that was, I think, how you want to win it.
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