Folks, at long last the 2025-26 NHL season is finally over. Congratulations to Amir Miftakhov and the Carolina Hurricanes for winning the second Stanley Cup in franchise history. Long live the Southeast Division! With things wrapped up nicely in a bow, we can start looking forward to next season, where the Tampa Bay Lightning are +1000 to win the 2026-27 Stanley Cup. Only Carolina (+650) and Colorado (+700) are heavier favorites.
Well, let’s not quite move forward yet. We still need to hand out some regular season awards for your Tampa Bay Lightning.
Look, they didn’t win the Stanley Cup. They didn’t accomplish the overall goal. Yes, it was unfortunately annoying that, yet again, they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. No one likes having to come up with an extra month of content more than us, and losing to Montreal wasn’t exactly enjoyable. Still, let’s not let it distract us from the fact that they were a pretty darn good team for the majority of the season.
Jon Cooper was the best coach of the year. Andrei Vasilevskiy was the best goaltender of the year. Nikita Kucherov was the most valuable player of the year. We know that because they have big metal trophies that say so. There was a long stretch of play where they were near impossible to beat. They played what people are calling the greatest outdoor game in the history of hockey…well, at least in the current, sell-more-jerseys, look-at-us, play-too-many-games manufactured NHL version of outdoor hockey.
It was by all accounts, except for one, a really good year. So, let’s take one more post to celebrate the fun season before blowing up the team, firing the GM into the sun, and letting Jon Cooper go coach lacrosse in Canada. Here are our annual awards (which we put all of 15 minutes into thinking about).
MVB – Most Valuable Bolt
Nikita Kucherov – 76 games, 130 points, 44 goals, 86 assists, a 12-game points streak, and a 10-game point streak
C’mon, you didn’t think we’d be crazy enough to skip over the player who was just awarded the Hart Trophy as the MVP for the team, right? While this might have been one of the deeper Lightning teams since the Cup runs, Tampa Bay still lives and dies by the play of Nikita Kucherov. He is the best player on the team. That’s it. Period. Full stop. There is a good chance that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future, so let’s add another award.
MVB – Non-Kucherov Edition
Jake Guentzel – 81 games, 38 goals, 50 assists, 5 game-winning goals, 2 short-handed goals
Alright. Now we can cook a little. There were some solid contenders to consider once Nikita Kucherov is out of the mix. Darren Raddysh’s prolific scoring in the absence of Victor Hedman earned him some consideration. Brandon Hagel’s dog-after-a-bone mentality on the ice (along with 36 goals) garnered some votes. In the end, it was the consistency of Guentzel that pushed him ahead of the pack. In his second season with the Lightning, he was a steadying force, especially early in the season when some of his teammates struggled to score. All season long he produced as he never went more than two games without recording at least one point.
October – 10 points in 11 games
November – 17 points in 14 games
December – 12 points in 14 games
January – 16 points in 13 games
February – 8 points in 6 games
March – 18 points in 16 games
April – 7 points in 7 games
Consistency, thy name is Jake Guentzel. He was also the ultimate team player, able to play on either top line, on the power play (30 power-play points), and short-handed.
The Wilson Alvarez Reverse Cy Young Award
Victor Hedman – 1 goal, 16 assists
For those who may not know what the NHL Cy Young Award. It’s an unofficial award for the player that scores the most goals with the fewest assists (so it looks like a baseball pitcher’s Won/Loss stat). This year, the NHL award goes to Steven Stamkos! His 42-goal, 24-assist season had the biggest discrepancy between the two stats. Shoutout to Emil Heineman of the Islanders whose 21-goal, 9-assist performance had the most Cy Young look to a stat group. Which makes us wonder if we will ever see another 20-game winner in baseball? That’s a topic for another website to tackle.
Oddly enough, the Lightning had zero players record more goals than assists this season. Weird. Pontus Holmberg came the closest with an 11-goal, 11-assist stat line. So, instead, we’re going with the reverse Cy Young, named after the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ “ace” starter in their inaugural 1998 season, Wilson Alvarez, who went 6-14 in that first year.
It was a tough season, both on and off the ice, for The Big Swede. He lacked his normal goal-scoring prowess in the 33 games that he appeared in, not registering a goal until February 28th against Buffalo.
. Even after struggling with an injury in pre-season, the start to his season was okay as he had eight points in his first nine games. It was a struggle after that, and it was good to see the captain realize he needed help and he went out to get himself in the right space of mind. We expect this to be a one-time appearance for him on the list as he should be rested and healthy to go for next season and back up to his old tricks
The Anthony Cirelli Best Defensive Forward Award
Pontus Holmberg – 70 games, 2.13 GA/60, 2.13 xGA/60, 46.33 CA/60
Yes, Anthony Cirelli had more ice time and played against better competition (and the award is named after him), but Pontus Holmberg was an absolute defensive nightmare for other teams to play against. Especially once Jon Cooper put him on the line with Yanni Gourde. Look at all of that blue space on the visualization up there!
The Lightning were a very good defensive team this season, and part of the reason was that Coach Cooper had his safety blanket line with Zemgus Girgensons, Gourde, and Holmberg. The first-year Bolt was one of best on the team at getting the puck out of danger (the Lightning zone) and into an attacking mode.
The Evgeni Nabokov Rookie of the Year Award
Charle-Edouard D’Astous – 70 games, 6 goals, 23 assists
Named after the only Calder Trophy Winner to ever lace up the skates for the Tampa Bay Lightning (11 games in 2014-15) we are handing this award out to a player that wasn’t technically a rookie by NHL standards. Our blog, our rules! Since he was 27-years-old for the majority of the season, D’Astous didn’t qualify for rookie eligibility for the league. Still, we’re handing it to him because of his overall performance, and the fact that he jumped into the fray right as the Lightning needed him the most and didn’t disappoint.
It was actually a fairly competitive year for rookies for the Lightning as eight different players that did meet the eligibility requirements suited up for the team. Had Dominic James not gotten hurt at the end of the season, perhaps he would have edged out D’Astous for the award. The Lightning also got strong contributions from Max Crozier (35 games), Declan Carlile (42 games), and Jack Finley, while Max Groshev and Simon Lundmark made their NHL debuts. Curtis Douglas (29 games) stuck around a lot longer than most people thought he would while Dylan Duke also appeared in a game.
Injuries provided the opportunity for many of the rookies to get their shot, and to their credit, they took advantage of the chances, to the point that it might have altered the plans that general manager Julien BriseBois had for them.
The Tanner Jeannot It Looked Good on Paper but Just Didn’t Work Out Award
Oliver Bjorkstrand – 80 games, 12 goals, 20 assists, 3 even-strength goals
A right-shot forward with a history of putting the puck in the net, the ability to fill a spot on the second line, and a 200-foot defensive game. Based on his skills and the style the Lightning played, it should have worked out for Oliver Bjorkstrand. Yet, for some reason it just didn’t translate to the type of on-the-ice production everyone was expecting.
To his credit, Bjorkstrand didn’t sulk or pout even when he found himself playing on the fourth line. He put the effort in every minute he was on the ice despite being asked to play a different role. Even though his last power play goal came on March 7th against Toronto, he still led all Lightning forwards with 9 power play goals.
It was a good idea to bring him in, it just didn’t work out. We have absolutely zero doubt he’ll score 25 goals with whoever he signs a one-year, $2.5 million contract with this summer (Columbus. Feels like it’s going to be Columbus).
The Best Goal of the Year
Jake Guentzel [12] (Darren Raddysh, Nikita Kucherov)
Everything about this goal was fantastic. From Vasilevskiy’s kick save on Jack Roslovic, to Kucherov motoring through the neutral zone to Darren Raddysh’s slick pass around Darnell Nurse to Guentzel’s finish. Just an absolutely filthy overtime goal.
It was also the second win in what would become a five-game winning streak that kind of righted the Lightning’s season a bit. They didn’t play well for most of the game, but found a way to win, a theme that emerged in their hot streak from December through February.
The Best Game of the Year
Lightning 6, Bruins 5 (SO) February 1
We’ll also call this the peak of the season. There were pirates. There were 64,000 fans freezing in the night. Victor Hedman was back in the line-up after a month out due to injury. The Lightning scored early. In fact, Brandon Hagel’s goal was the fastest ever to start an outdoor game. Then, Boston scored often. There was a goalie fight. A big comeback. A goal was waved off in overtime. Finally, the Lightning won it in a shootout. It was their 17th win in their last 19 games at the time and it all but sent them into the Olympic Break as the best team in the league in the eyes of the mainstream media. It was all you could want in a hockey game.
The Worst Game of the Year
Didn’t like the start (down 3-0 five minutes into the second period). Didn’t like the way the Lightning tried to bully the Sabres around. Didn’t like the penalty kill (3-for-7), didn’t like the fact that the Lightning allowed three goals in the final nine minutes of play to not only blow a two-goal lead, but to do so in regulation.
We talked about it as the big “What If” in our latest Backchecking the Bolts (discussion starts at the 14:20 mark) podcast. If the Lightning hold on to win in regulation, and the rest of the season plays out like it did, they would have finished atop the Atlantic Division and drawn Boston in the first round. Do things end up differently? The Bruins would have been a better match-up in our opinion, and if the Lightning had won and shaken off their first-round issues, who knows how far they go?
The Funniest Moment of the Season
Nikita Kucherov doesn’t smile on the ice all that often, but he had a wide grin as the boos rained down on him in Chicago as the teams went to a skill competition to decide their game on January 23rd. After he beat Arvid Soderblom, Kucherov shushed the crowd to the delight of Lightning fans everywhere.
The 2025-26 Tampa Bay Lightning season landed somewhere between good and great on the grand scale of things. It was both highly entertaining and highly frustrating. There was plenty of history, yet in the end, they failed in their ultimate goal. While it was the cagey veterans that led the way for most of it, they were pushed a bit by some of the younger, maybe hungrier players itching to contribute a little bit more on the ice. That’s not a bad thing, and perhaps it keeps those old lions on their toes a bit and sparks them into a nice run next season.
