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By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter 

Catching a glimpse of 'The Cup will have to wait for now

Crunch Time

 

Last updated 6/18/2015 at 12:18pm



The visit of Lord Stanley’s Cup will have to wait at least another year.

And if that is the case a year or so from now, local hockey favorite son Tyler Johnson’s wrist injury just might be healed so he can heft the trophy around for the day that each member of the winning team takes it home.

Johnson’s Tampa Bay Lightning lost 2-0 in game six of the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs in a series where every other game was decided by one goal. Even for non-hockey fans, it was riveting to watch the amazing goaltending exhibition put on by the Blackhawks’ Corey Crawford and Tampa’s Ben Bishop.

Those who followed Johnson, the former Spokane Chief, wondered just what happened to him in the showdown for one of the most coveted — and storied — trophies in all of sports.

After all, he led all scorers through the first three rounds of the playoffs with 12 goals and nine assists for 21 points. But he’d score just once versus the Blackhawks, who proved to be exceptionally stingy allowing shots close in, the place where Johnson was an exceptional sniper.

Still, when the final horn sounded and the Chicago celebration had begun, Johnson’s 23 points on 13 goals and 10 assists made him the co-leader in playoff scoring with the Hawks’ Patrick Kane.

The Central Valley High School grad was the odds-on favorite to capture the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP in the playoffs. That honor ultimately went to Chicago’s Duncan Keith, who, among other things, scored what proved to be the game winning goal at the 17:13 mark of the second period.

But as the final moments ticked away Monday night at Chicago’s United Center, and the Blackhawks finally got breathing room and the first two-goal lead in the series on Kane’s goal with 5 minutes, 14 seconds remaining, the mystery surrounding Johnson was unveiled.

With their fate sealed and no game seven back in Florida, the Lightning were able to reveal that Johnson played at least five games with a broken wrist.

Take that all you athletes who get sidelined with muscle spasms.

Johnson has beaten all the odds to make it to the Major Leagues of hockey so he’s going to make the most of an opportunity that may never come again.

He’s American and a small guy — 5 foot, 9 inches and 175 ponds — in today’s National Hockey League where, with skates on, players now rival some in the NBA in terms of height, and weight wise could double as a linebacker in the NFL.

Plus he’s a young man of exceptionally great character, so it would have been so great to have a visit from “The Cup.”

Besides its longevity, having first been played for in 1894, the trophy donated by then Governor General of Canada, Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley is unique among sports in that not only are the winning teams listed, but so is each and every player, coach and others.

On the current five rings that sit below the simple silver bowl, there are over 2,000 names engraved on the trophy that weighs in at about 35 pounds. The trophy has its own fulltime “keeper,” who, with white gloves, accompanies the cup wherever it goes.

Besides the thrill of winning the Stanley Cup, one of the perks that each player receives is to take the trophy back to his hometown for one day.

Over the years the places the Stanley Cup has been and the stories it could tell if it could talk would be amazing. Wonder if it recalls being lost in a canal in Canada decades ago after whomever had it got a bit drunk and tossed it in the water.

Did it have a hard time breathing when brothers Rob and Scott Niedermayer from just across the border in Cranbrook, British Columbia reportedly toted the trophy to the top of one of the 10,000 foot in the Canadian Rocky Mountains peaks that look down upon their hometown?

Scott Parker brought the Stanley Cup to Spokane in the summer of 2001 after the former Spokane Braves’ and Kelowna Rockets’ player won it while playing with the Colorado Avalanche. He had a special private viewing in the Spokane Oldtimers Hockey dressing room where the guys lined up to have photos taken as if they were posing with a Super Model.

In the wishful woulda,’ shoulda,’ coulda’ world that many here hoped would happen if the Lightning had won, Johnson would have been one of over a dozen players who have had Spokane roots to win the trophy. He would have joined the likes of others such as Mark Rypien who won a Super Bowl, and Tom Sneva, who’s won the Indy 500 as having realized boyhood dreams being tops in their sport.

However, Johnson would have been the first hockey athlete actually born in Spokane.

It would have been a heck of a 25th birthday party on July 29 if that were the day he chose for the Cup’s local homecoming.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.

pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.

 

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