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Yes, the Tampa Bay Lightning were one of the teams picked by experts to be crowned 2017 Stanley Cup Champions before the regular season got underway. No, it did not turn out that way. The Bolts could not even make it into the postseason for the first time since the 2012-13 season.

If you're looking at this and have not followed Tampa Bay this season, I am sure it appears to you as though the 2016-17 NHL regular season was a complete failure for the Lightning. However, that certainly is not the case.

The Bolts were dealt a crummy hand this season, facing an obscene amount of injuries to key players. Captain and best player, Steven Stamkos, missed a grand total of 65 games. That alone would have put a huge dent in Tampa's production but the bleeding did not stop there. Ryan Callahan missed one less game than Stamkos and unfortunately could not recover fully ever, making his contract a very undesirable one. In addition, Tyler Johnson missed 16 games which really depleted the team down the stretch. Of course, these are the big names that missed time due to injury, but they were not the only ones. All season long, the Lightning were bringing up and sending down players from Syracuse. This not only provided a fun guessing game to play with buddies as to who would be playing any given night, it made it quite difficult to build any sort of chemistry between lines.

We also have to remember that Steve Yzerman was in the business of creating cap space during this season's trade deadline. Nothing to make this team stronger was acquired. Instead, the Bolts saw key pieces to the puzzle such as Ben Bishop, Brian Boyle, and Valtteri Filppula go to other teams.

Still, the Lightning continued to fight and were in playoff contention until the second-to-last day of the regular season. No player lost to injury or trade deterred them from trying to reach their ultimate goal.

Could this season be viewed as a disappointment? Of course, it can. Anytime a team does not make it to the playoffs, it is viewed as disappointing by the entire organization and their fans. However, disappointing doesn't necessarily translate into failure.

So although the 2016-17 NHL regular season did not go they way the Tampa Bay Lightning had hoped, it would be incorrect to call it a complete failure.

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