This could be the ending of more than one era.

The first thing to understand is that we may be at the close of the period in which the Tampa Bay Lightning are a truly competitive team. Today's loss marks two consecutive first-round exits, and neither of those bounce-outs have been especially competitive in terms of wins and losses. In the last two postseasons, they've won just three out of 11 games, and while there are a bunch of close losses in the mix, the fact remains that they were losses.

It would take a lot of smart moves for them to revive this core's competitive ability, even with the acknowledgement that a number of really strong pieces are in place. Maybe you can say this was just an exceptionally bad matchup for the Bolts, which is clear from the result, but even still, this doesn