Hockey is over. The winner of the whole dang thing is ex-Capitals forward Jeff Halpern, native of Potomac, Maryland.

(Also winning the Stanley Cup is the team for whom he is assistant coach, the Tampa Bay Lightning.)

Halpern’s team, who are called the Lightning, or “Bolts” for short, defeated the Dallas Stars in six games to win their second championship in franchise history. The Cup-winning goal was scored by the person mostly likely to win the Conn Smythe, forward Brayden Point.

UPDATED: JK it was Victor Hedman.

But who cares about that. Back to Jeff Halpern.

Halpern, 44, played seven seasons with the Washington Capitals, including a stint as team captain in 2005-06. Halpern was the first youth hockey player from the Washington DC area to ever play for the Caps. Following his playing career, Halpern worked with Tampa’s development program before getting named assistant coach in 2018. Since then he has overseen forwards for the Bolts, who won their first ever Presidents Trophy in 2019 and then got swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets. That is when they did this tweet, which I have framed next to my glamour shots of Dan Steinberg:

We don’t have any words and we know you don’t want to hear them.

We understand your anger, your frustration, your sadness. Everything you’re feeling – we get it.

This isn’t the ending we imagined, and certainly not the one we wanted. Thank you for being there the entire way.

— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) April 17, 2019

And now they’ve won the Stanley Cup. And by they I mean Jeff Halpern, but like in the royal we.

the pride of the potomac
jeff halpern pic.twitter.com/SVDrW4dwoU

— Peter Hassett (@peterhassett) September 12, 2020

This is the first championship for Halpern, who is also a founding partner of Astro Doughnuts and Chicken, a DC area restaurant with two locations, of which one I can personally confirm is really tasty. Halpern’s hockey team, who are still called the Tampa Bay Lightning, won their previous title in 2004.

Unrelated to literally anything else in this article, Dallas Stars forward Tyler Seguin had a weird playoffs with just two goals, which someone should ask his team owner about.

Anyway. Never mind that. That had nothing to do with this story. Pretend that didn’t even happen.

Congratulations, Halpy!

ᵃˡˢᵒ ᶜᵒⁿᵍʳᵃᵗᵘˡᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗᵃᵐᵖᵃ ᵇᵃʸ ˡᶦᵍʰᵗⁿᶦⁿᵍ, ᴵ ᵍᵘᵉˢˢ

Headline photo: Tampa Bay Lightning