These Are The Days
Oh no! We suck again!!
Man... When you look at how the Crunch are performing, combined with how TB is performing... Combined with how several of our CHL prospects are over-performing... Is there an organization in the league in as good shape as we currently are?
Short answer is no.
We SHOULD be winning all the Stanley Cups year after year but as I said in my previous statement I think we need to go all in here. There are SO MANY teams that I can think of that under-performed in their era that deserved to make history and didn't. Those Bruins in the 70's should've won anywhere from 3 to 5 Cups but didn't. The Braves DOMINATED for like 15 years and only won a single World Series. To cite 6 degrees of separation, in that one World Series Championship those Braves defeated a juggernaut Indians franchise that dominated the 90's and to this day those teams are still arguably among of the best hitting clubs of all time. Cleveland didn't win a single championship. The coke machine Mets of the 1980's won their single title in '86 and they should've won at least another. The Chicago Bears of 1985 are commonly regarded as the greatest football team of all time and yet that one championship year is the only thing they managed to do. The Bills teams of the early 1990's went for FOUR straight Super Bowls and didn't win a single one. The Raiders of the 1970's always fell short in the Conference Final game and despite the fact they won a championship in an era dominated by the Steelers. I'd love to cite the NBA but considering that 20+ years can just be labeled Celtics win/Lakers win I do not regard it as a league of much parity.
We CAN NOT afford to become coulda, shoulda, woulda. We've seen the Sharks and Capitals do it for somewhere close to 10 years now and by God we're gonna end up just like them if we keep coming up short. Whatever it takes the Lightning need to get greedy and pile on here. Another defenseman, another high octane winger, bringing back Brian Boyle... man I don't care what it is.
As you alluded to, the farm is incredible, we're incredible everything is incredible. There IS no other organization like this. It took 25 years but we are at the pinnacle of our franchise's existence and on the night of December 10th 2017 we are at the pinnacle of the NHL.