Better luck next year: Are the Tampa Bay Lightning still top-tier Stanley Cup contenders?

They are still a playoff team. But are they a Stanley Cup team?

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs: The Tampa Bay Lightning.

Between the 2014 and 2022 seasons there was not a more consistently successful team in the NHL than the Tampa Bay Lightning. They were regulars in the Eastern Conference Final, made four Stanley Cup Final appearances, won two of them and were always going deep into the playoffs — even if it did not always result in a championship.

And then the same thing that has happened to so many championship-level teams before them started happening to them.

They ran into the wall.

Since their most recent Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2022, the Lightning have failed to win a playoff series, won just four playoff games and have fallen down to 12th in regular season wins over that stretch.

Just for comparisons sake, in the three years prior to that they were second in the NHL in regular season wins and won 17 more playoff games than the next-closest team.

This is not really an uncommon trend for teams that reached that sort of peak for any stretch of time.

• After winning their third Stanley Cup in six years during the 2014-15 season, the Chicago Blackhawks lost in the first-round two years in a row, and then started their current stretch of non-playoff hockey that doesn’t seem to have an end in sight.

• The Los Angeles Kings won two Stanley Cups in three years, sandwiched around another Western Conference Finals trip, then made the playoffs in just two of the next four seasons, went into a rebuild, and have not won a playoff series since.

• After winning their back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2015-16 and 2016-17, the Pittsburgh Penguins won one playoff series in 2017-18, lost in the first-round four years in a row, and now are into their inevitable rebuild.

• After their back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances in 2007-08 and 2008-09 the Detroit Red Wings won a couple of first-round series before having three straight one-and-dones and then entering their still ongoing rebuild.

Nobody stays on top of the mountain forever, and once you have climbed to the top it can be really difficult to stay there.

Core players get older.

They get more expensive.

The salary cap breaks things apart, especially lower down the lineup with depth players.

You’ve spent years using prospects and draft picks as trade capital for immediate help and you no longer have a pipeline of talent to find cheaper players that can step into big roles from within.

The grind of several long playoff runs in a row eventually takes its toll.

It is not really any one of those variables that plays a role in the inevitable decline of these teams — it is all of them happening together at the same time.

That is where the Lightning kind of find themselves right now.

They are still very clearly a playoff team thanks to the fact they still have elite players at the top of the lineup, even if they are older. Nikita Kucherov is still one of the best players in hockey. Brayden Point is still tremendous. Jake Guentzel was a perfect addition in free agency. Victor Hedman might not be a Norris Trophy finalist every year, but he’s still really good. Andrei Vasilevskiy can still take over games. Those players alone put the Lightning in the playoffs. But what can they still do from there?

Let’s talk about it.