Ondřej Palát: Career Review and Best Wishes

(Pic: tsn.ca)

 This one hurts.

Of course, it always hurts to lose someone you love. Imagine the tears that are going to flow during the video tribute when ten-year Lightning veteran Ondřej Palát returns to Amelie Arena for the first time: I mean, it will be disgusting that he'll be wearing a New Jersey Devils uniform, but I'm not going to be able to hold myself together (although I'll be watching on TV, as a faraway fan repping #DistantThunder).

Yes, the 208th pick in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft, the 2013 Calder Cup Champion and 2014 Calder Trophy Runner-Up, the member of the famed Triplets line with Tyler Johnson and Nikita Kucherov, the two-way conscience, the consistent scorer, the playoff hero, the two-time Stanley Cup Champion, "Sneaky P"... 

Ondřej Palát has left the Lightning.

How? Why?

We've all been over this before. The Lightning are caught between having a host of rising stars in their early-to-mid-twenties (Paul, Sergachev, Cirelli, Černák) that need market-value long-term contracts, having several top-tier NHL superstars on large-dollar deals (Vasilevskiy, Kucherov, Hedman, Stamkos), and trying to ice a balanced team during a period when the salary cap has been flattened for years by low profits due to pandemic shut-downs. 

As a result, Lightning GM Julien BriseBois was forced to set aside any personal attachment he or the organization might feel for Pally, and try to be strictly objective. A pros and cons list to re-signing the winger might look something like...

PROS: Strong two-way forward. Consistent scorer. Clutch playoff performer. Exceptional chemistry with teammates (those no-look passes with Kucherov!!). Great in the room. Cute as a button. Did I forget anything?

CONS: Thirty-one years old, in a league where scoring totals tend to decline as forwards progress beyond their twenties. Frequently injured (he's only played 80+ games once in his career, routinely missing 10-20 games with injury). 

The expectation is that over time, age times injury will equal declining production. The Devils were willing to offer Palát a five year contract at six million dollars per year. That deal will probably be good value for Jersey in the first few years, and maybe not as much in the last few. Regardless, the Lightning don't have the money. Being forced to choose between very good players in their mid-twenties and very good players in their early thirties will always have the same result, no matter how beloved the player's history with the team is, no matter how good his playoff production has been, and no matter how cute he is.

So let's take a moment to remember some good times.

Starting in 2005, Ondřej played for HC Frýdek-Místek, a second-division under-18 team in his Czech home town. He split his junior career between HC Frýdek-Místek and first-division team HC Vítkovice Steel before joining Drummondville of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in 2009 as an 18 year old.

In his second season with the Voltigeurs, Palát scored 96 points in 61 games (39g, 57a) and represented the Czech Republic (now Czechia) in the 2011 World Junior Championship in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York. The Czechs failed to advance to the medal rounds, but Palát scored 2 goals and added an assist in 6 games. He added 11 points in 10 playoff games with Drummondville, and showed enough in his final year of junior hockey to draw the attention of the Lightning who took him 208th out of the 211 players drafted in 2011.

Palát joined the Norfolk Admirals for the 2011-2012 season and put up 30 points in 61 games in his first year as a pro. Importantly, he was a participant in the Admirals' unbelievable 28-game winning streak. Under Head Coach Jon Cooper, Palát and the Admirals won the Calder Cup as American Hockey League champions.

For the 2012-2013 season, Tampa Bay moved its AHL affiliation to Syracuse, and Palát and his teammates joined the Crunch. He continued to improve and develop, and he scored at nearly a point-per-game pace, including notching his first hat trick as a pro, scoring three goals against Rochester on February 26, 2013. 

A week after that hat trick, Palát was recalled THE SHOW for the first time, joining the struggling Lightning on March 3. He debuted the next night when the Lightning visited the Penguins, recording his first NHL point with an assist on Tom Pyatt's (remember him?) second period goal. The Lightning lost 4-3, however, continuing a downward trend. With the team clunking along, Lightning General Manager Steve Yzerman dismissed Head Coach Guy Boucher and elevated Cooper to the big club. 

When the 2013-2014 season began, Palát started the year on the Lightning and excelled at the NHL level, scoring 21 goals and 59 points in 81 games, good enough to place second in rookie of the year Calder Trophy voting. His Norfolk-to-Tampa Bay teammate Tyler Johnson would place third, with Nathan McKinnon taking the award.

The emergence of Jon Cooper as a top-level coach, the arrival of Palát, Johnson, and fellow rookie Nikita Kucherov, and having established stars Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman enter their primes would be the defining moments of the Lightning's next decade. 

Together the group would swing between the highs of two Conference Finals and four Stanley Cup Finals including brilliant back-to-back championships, the pains of the injury-laden 2016-17 season, and the shock of the 2019 first-round sweep at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets after an all-time great regular season. And as a consistent performer, especially in playoff time, Pally has been emblematic of the group. He leaves with a reputation as a clutch playoff warrior, having elevated his Goals-Per-Game average from 0.227 regular season to 0.347 in the playoffs. In the 2020 Stanley Cup run, he set the Lightning team record for goals in the most consecutive games with five.

He leaves the Lightning with his name twice etched on the Stanley Cup. Best wishes in New Jersey to Ondřej Palát.

Stanley Cup Final Flashback: Vasilevskiy's Mask

 

(image from wtsp.com)

In all of sports, is there anyone more famously superstitious than hockey goalies? There are the obvious legends, like Patrick Roy talking to his goalposts and Glenn Hall barfing before every game. Those two Hockey Hall of Famers might be excessive cases, but NHL 'tenders are notorious for their adherence to routine and ritual. Some might consider this superstition (gotta put each piece of equipment on in order, gotta do this, gotta do that), while many likely consider it a way of building focus and eliminating distracting variables. So what happens if something has to change? Does it affect the player's focus? Does it affect performance?

In Game Six of the Stanley Cup Final, with the Tampa Bay Lightning trailing the Colorado Avalanche three games to two in the series, we saw a fascinating case of a goalie dealing with a sudden equipment change with a quick goal to follow. The goalie in question was Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Lightning's dominant superstar netminder. 

The Lightning started the second period of the must-win game up 1-0 off a goal from Captain Steven Stamkos. Although the Bolts were dealing with several injuries and at times looked over-matched by the deep and talented Avalanche, they held the edge in shots 10-8 through the first period, and importantly, had the edge in goal: the Avs' Darcy Kuemper was having an average-at-best post-season and was definitely beatable, while Vasilevskiy was coming off two straight Cup wins including a Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, and was considered virtually unbeatable in elimination games.

But early in the second period, something was off. 

After an initial minute of back and forth play, the Avalanche were working behind the Lightning net. The puck went into the air and Vasilevskiy reached back and caught it, stopping play at 18:24. He then skated to the bench, indicating there was an issue with his mask. He handed it over to the trainer and skated back to the Lightning crease with his spare mask, slid it on, and squared up for the faceoff. 

Eighteen seconds later, Nathan MacKinnon put a laser one-timer under Vasilevskiy's arm, changing the momentum of the game. 

It would be unfair to MacKinnon and the Avalanche to suggest that Vasilevskiy's mask issue contributed meaningfully to the goal; after all, the Avs held the zone, made several shot attempts, and Bowen Byram set MacKinnon up to unleash a blast that few goalies would have any chance of stopping.

NEVERTHELESS.

The timing is more than coincidental, and if there are any goalies capable of stopping MacKinnon's shot, Vasilevskiy is certainly among them. He made other seemingly impossible saves in the same game. Saying a different mask contributed to the goal would be silly superstition, but saying that the distraction of a gear change mid-game affected his concentration by even a single percentage point is reasonable. And a single percent can make the difference with players at the level of MacKinnon and Vasilevskiy.

From a Lightning fan's perspective, wondering what would have happened if Vasilevskiy's mask did not require service is enough to drive you crazy: naturally, the Big Cat would have made a stunning save on Mackinnon, momentum would have stayed with the Bolts, and they would have won the game 1-0 before winning Game Seven and collecting their third straight Stanley Cup. Right? Right?

That might be going too far. But, honestly, this has been keeping me awake at night all summer and I had to get it out of my system. 

I hope it hasn't been keeping Vasilevskiy up. He needs his rest for the coming season.