When all was said and done, the better team prevailed in the 2020 Stanley Cup Final. The Tampa Bay Lightning closed out the series on Monday with a 2-0 victory over the Dallas Stars in Game 6, winning the second championship in franchise history. The Stars, founded in 1967 as the Minnesota North Stars, have one Cup in franchise history.

On Monday night, the Stars had trouble for 50-plus minutes in generating any sort of sustained attack. Andrei Vasilevskiy notched a 22-save shutout. Struggling on both sides of special teams during the series, the Stars got in early penalty trouble in the first period and paid the price on a Brayden Point put-in of a fat rebound off on a Nikita Kucherov shot.

Anton Khudobin otherwise did everything in his power to give Dallas a chance to win, stopping 27 of 29 shots. He had little chance of stopping a give-and-go counterattack off a neutral zone intercept (on a sequence that started with a bad line change by Tampa). Blake Coleman finished it off from the right slot off a feed from Cedric Paquette.

The Stars, outshot 21-8 through two periods and 10-4 in the middle frame, had a rough time getting more than one-and-done forays up the ice and often needed three or four tries to exit their own zone. Dallas had three power plays including a vital last-ditch chance in the latter third period but came away with little but frustration.

Over the final 10 minutes, the Stars finally got some sustained pressure but Vasilevskiy was equal to every shot that was not blocked. Dallas put up a fight but it was too little and too late.

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