Biden avoids politics in honoring hockey champion Lightning

“I’m not declaring that the very first lady being there at your arena throughout the playoffs is why you received,” Biden stated with a smile. “But just expressing that she was there through the election time, as nicely. She seems to show up when people today get. Just some thing to believe about.”

Biden designed minor point out of gamers other than Stamkos while talking about the Lighting’s back again-to-back title runs, which relied greatly on Russian goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, ahead Nikita Kucherov and defenseman Mikhail Sergachev. Vasilevskiy was the playoff MVP very last yr, and Kucherov was the best scorer in each individual postseason.

All 3 players attended the occasion, and Sergachev shared pictures of them all around the White Property on social media. There have been no visible absences, and a handful of players from the Lightning’s 2020 championship group who experienced departed or retired even manufactured appearances.

Just for this event, the workforce manufactured a 3rd excursion to the nation’s capital in 8 months following now browsing the Washington Capitals 2 times this year. The Lightning flew Sunday night time right after enjoying at the Florida Panthers and had been established to return house ahead of dealing with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday in just one of their final games of the typical time right before the playoffs start off up coming 7 days.

“Pretty much all people was on board, and every person that could make it — former players and things — they all tried out to make it in this article,” alternate captain Ryan McDonagh explained. “It’s just a fantastic custom that we have: You come to be section of a championship crew, you get to go to the White Residence and meet the president.”

Even with the Lightning winning the Stanley Cup a few moments — in 2004, 2020 and 2021 — it was the organization’s first time checking out a sitting president at the White Household. The 2004-05 NHL lockout prevented that year’s staff from going, and the pandemic delayed this opportunity till 9 months soon after the second of these back-to-back again championships.

“It was a lengthy time in the making,” Stamkos explained. “We weren’t positive if we have been likely to get this option, but it was definitely really worth the wait around.”

Stamkos, who is Canadian, deferred to McDonagh, a Minnesota indigenous, to converse on behalf of the crew at the ceremony. Gamers and mentor Jon Cooper, who were being sporting the two Cup rings, were most impressed by Biden inviting them into the Oval Business to chat afterward.

“In the placement he’s in (getting) the chief of the free planet and all that things, he has an astounding capability to wipe that persona aside and just be a human becoming like he was 1 of our teammates,” said Cooper, who is a twin citizen of the U.S. and Canada. “I kind of desired to get greedy and sit down with a beer on a barstool with this person and listen to the story of his daily life. You can see why he was elected president.”

Biden won some extra details when he praised the Tampa location for Key League Baseball’s Rays achieving the Entire world Collection in 2020 and the NFL’s Buccaneers successful the Super Bowl months later. He mentioned the Lightning “may be below subsequent 12 months — who is aware of?”

The Lightning are again amongst the NHL’s prime teams and are searching to turn into the initially to acquire the Cup a few years in a row since the New York Islanders dynasty in the early 1980s.

“The fantastic thing with our group is the hunger’s even now there,” McDonagh claimed. “We never have to have any variety of extra inspiration, but undoubtedly this does heighten the exhilaration, for positive, going into the final week of the normal period and before the begin of the playoffs.”

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Adhere to AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SWhyno

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