SIMMONS: It’s too hard to have a dynasty in the salary-capped NHL

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These are not the Tampa Bay Lightning of the Stanley Cup seasons.

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Yes, they still have Jon Cooper coaching, Victor Hedman on defence, Andrei Vasilevskiy in goal, and the magician Nikita Kucherov up front — all of them all world — but what has happened to the Lightning is the roster erosion that inevitably occurs when trying to balance winning titles with maintaining salary-cap observance.

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Can you imagine the great Edmonton Oilers teams, with Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Grant Fuhr and Paul Coffey, in a salary-cap era? Wouldn’t happen.

Can you imagine trying to keep the New York Islanders dynasty team of Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin, and Billy Smith together while doing cap math at the very same time?

Even those Detroit Red Wings teams with Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Brendan Shanahan and Nick Lidstrom wouldn’t have been as deep or strong in a cap era.

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The Tampa championship teams don’t have Yanni Gourde anymore. He’s starring in Seattle. Barclay Goodrow is in New York. Blake Coleman is in Calgary. Ondrej Palat is playing a significant role in New Jersey. That’s four of the top nine forwards gone from the Cup winners.

Hedman used to pair with Jan Rutta. He’s now in Pittsburgh. Erik Cernak, hurt most of this first-round series, used to partner with the veteran Ryan McDonagh, who’s now in Nashville.

So the team that won two straight Cups and played for a third one is missing three of its top four defencmen against the Maple Leafs.

It’s still a team of some quality, especially at the top of the roster. And general manager Julien BriseBois has done terrific work in filling holes with the Lightning. But what’s most unfortunate about these salary-capped days in hockey is how the money trail chops up champions and denies the sport of anything close to dynasties.

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The Habs of the ’70s. The Oilers and Islanders of the ’80s. After that, the championship runs in Detroit, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in Pittsburgh, in Colorado. Are any of those possible today?

And isn’t every sport better when it can celebrate great champions?

THIS AND THAT

The use of instant replay in hockey has completely lost its way. It was put in originally because of an egregious offside. That was the intention. Now it’s being checked for minutiae that would never be called or even discovered by officials under normal circumstances. The NHL has to figure out a way to stop turning the game over to computer watchers, looking for details that would never have been considered in the past … The hand-pass goal called off in the Boston-Florida game Friday night would never, ever have been called by a referee … Suddenly, Linus Ullmark is playing like Linus Ullmark, and that’s not good with the record-setting Bruins a game away from first-round elimination … And it’s not just the goaltending in Boston. The team hasn’t looked like the steady, unflappable, complete, three-zone Bruins we saw almost all season … Playoffs can be a time of redemption. Morgan Rielly, who may have had his worst season in Toronto this year, has been just about the Leafs’ best player in the first round against Tampa Bay … My first-round team of playoff all-stars would include Rielly, Miro Heiskanen of Dallas, Alex Pietrangelo of Vegas, Matthew Tkachuk of Florida, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen of Colorado, Mark Stone of Vegas, and Leon Draisaitl of Edmonton. Right after that: Roope Hintz of Dallas. The goalie, Stars’ netminder Jake Oettinger … Why Dallas might claw its way to the final: Oettinger is clearly the best goalie left in a Western Conference with rather average netminding … I still want to see if Auston Matthews can pull off a playoff MacKinnon, and just take over a game or a series. That’s still missing from his rather brilliant career resume heading into Saturday night.

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HEAR AND THERE

Putting the Leafs playoff misery into some kind of perspective: Since Toronto won a playoff round in 2004, this is how they compare in Canada. In order, Montreal has won 11 rounds, Vancouver eight; Ottawa seven; Edmonton six; Calgary five; Winnipeg three. In those same years, the Chicago Blackhawks have won 17 rounds, even while missing the playoffs nine different times. And the historically pathetic Arizona Coyotes have won three rounds and they’ve missed the post-season 15 of the past 19 years … Ilya Sorokin is one of the truly great goaltenders in hockey — he will get all-star votes and Vezina votes — but that was one of the single-worst overtime goals anyone has ever allowed that eliminated the New York Islanders on Friday night. And now there are calls — and have been for a while now — to have Lou Lamoriello replaced as GM of the Isles … My first thought upon hearing Rick Bowness go off at the end of the Winnipeg Jets season: Good for him. My second thought: Was this his last game as an NHL coach after more than 2,600 as a head coach and assistant coach? He says he still wants to coach … Another GM in trouble: Does Kevin Cheveldayoff survive with the Jets? Time was, GM jobs were like Senate appointments. You had them forever. There have been more than 10 GM changes over the past two seasons … You can pencil in Henrik Lundqvist for Hall of Fame election this year. But when does the Hall take a deeper look at Tom Barrasso, Curtis Joseph and Mike Vernon as possibilities? Goalies and coaches have been historically under-represented in the Hall. Might be time for Ken Hitchcock to get the call. And there is forever conversation — positive and negative — if you mention Mike Keenan and Hall of Fame in the same sentence.

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SCENE AND HEARD

John Schneider managed his 100th big league game on Friday night. He has managing at an impressive 102-win pace through parts of two seasons. The most wins the Jays have had in any season was 99, back in 1985 when Bobby Cox managed the Jays. Cox was 44 years old back then. Schneider is 43 right now … Matt Chapman is having an April to remember. He’s first in the American League in batting, first in OPS, first in slugging, first in doubles, second in hits and second in runs scored … How tough is the AL East. Tampa Bay is on pace to win 132 games. Baltimore is playing at 110-win pace. The Jays were at 106 heading into Saturday afternoon. And the poor Yankees in fourth place, on pace for only 91 wins … Each of the five starting pitchers on the Jays have thrown between 27 and 31 innings to date. That’s about as balanced as you can get … Teoscar Hernandez, back in Toronto with Seattle, has six home runs this season even though he’s off to a bad start — which equals the number of the Blue Jays starting outfield. The Jays are doing all this winning with Dalton Varsho hitting .189, George Springer hitting .218 and Kevin Kiermaier surprising at a powerless .290. Combined, the starting outfield has 16 extra-base hits in April … Is it just me, or does Brandon Belt, after hitting .213 last year, look done to you? … Who were your favourite players when you were 12 years old? Mine were Dave Keon, Carl Yastrzemski, Jerry West, Johnny Unitas and Mel Profit … What Pascal Siakam isn’t at crunch time: Jimmy Butler … Lamar Jackson took all kinds of grief from media types for not hiring an agent when he was unsigned in Baltimore. He wound up signing with the Ravens for $260 million. Not having an agent means he’ll make $8 million more in the end, rather than giving up his 3% agent fees … Is there a wiser front office, personnel-wise, in the NFL than that of the Philadelphia Eagles?

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AND ANOTHER THING

How is it that in just two years of being a rightsholder that TNT has become the premier broadcaster of NHL hockey? And ESPN isn’t all that far behind them. Remember when no one was close to Hockey Night In Canada? … Nothing wrong with Mississauga’s Dillon Brooks trying to play the role of WWE heel in the NBA. But if you’re going to do it, do it right. Brooks left Friday night after Memphis was eliminated by the Lakers, walking out without doing any interviews. You want to be the bad guy, play the part. You don’t see the Bloodline ducking out on interviews … It’s no surprise that the open-minded Masai Ujiri is doing due diligence on Becky Hammon as a candidate to be the next coach of the Raptors. Why wouldn’t he? But whoever chooses to hire Hammon or any other woman as a head coach in North American men’s sports is trailblazing, gambling and possibly changing sport forever … Nice to see Raptors front office executive Teresa Resch added to the board of the Canadian Olympic Committee … Great to see the identical Brown twins from London, Ont., drafted into the NFL and heading to great teams. DB Sydney went to Philadelphia in the third round. RB Chase went to Cincinnati in Round 5 … Hope to see Seattle shortstop J.P. Crawford back in Ontario when his father, Larry, gets inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in the fall. Larry Crawford was an excellent defensive back, mostly with the B.C. Lions in the ’80s. Among those Crawford was coached by or played with: Don Matthews, Adam Rita, Mervyn Fernandez, Roy Dewalt and Lui Passaglia … Under the Department of dumb: Edmonton fans booing Drew Doughty, who was brilliant for Canada at the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Games. And he would have been on two more Olympic teams had NHL players been sent in 2018 and 2022 … I can’t see Alex DeBrincat in Ottawa next season. He’s looking to take his goal-scoring somewhere else … Happy birthday to Timothy Liljegren (24), Isiah Thomas (62), Jonathan Toews (35), Curtis Joseph (56), Jim Benning (60), Doug Shedden (62), Chris Kreider (32), Luis Aparicio (89) and Phil Garner (74) … And hey, whatever became of Mike Richards?

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WATCHING LEBRON IS WATCHING GREATNESS

Sometimes it’s easy to bypass and take for granted the sustained greatness of LeBron James. He’s just there and he just does it, year after year, team after team, circumstance after circumstance.

When the Los Angeles Lakers knocked the Memphis Grizzlies out of the playoffs on Friday night, that happened to be the 271st playoff game of King James’ more than remarkable career. That’s almost 100 playoff games more than Michael Jordan managed. That’s 51 more than Kobe Bryant played. That’s 29 more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had.

Chris Chelios, who played in the NHL forever, leads all players in Stanley Cup games played with 266, not far from the James number, but a number unlikely to be caught in the future. Wayne Gretzky was only at 208. Sidney Crosby, behind the current leader Corey Perry at 195, is at 180 himself.

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In 20 seasons in Cleveland, Miami and Los Angeles, James has averaged 27.2 points per game in the regular season. In the playoffs, he has averaged 28.6 per game. He doesn’t slow down, he just changes his game ever so slightly to succeed as the years move on.

The Lakers won 43 games this NBA season, two more than the Raptors. They’re in the final four in the West.

Who knows where they go from here.

We do know that every night that we can turn on a game with LeBron playing is another chance to watch greatness and take part in history all at the very same time. There is no one like him in any of the four professional major sports now that Tom Brady has retired.

He looked too old to be a rookie when he came into the NBA and now he seems too young to be in his 20th season. He doesn’t necessarily get better with age: He just continues to produce, all the time, every year.

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