Despite Bolts’ Cup loss, Tampa Bay charities win big thanks to $1.2M donation

With the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Game 6 loss on home ice to the Colorado Avalanche Sunday evening, Lord Stanley’s Cup is headed west for the first time since 2019, and there will be no boat parade on the Hillsborough River, no drinking beer from one of the most hallowed trophies in sports.

Yes, the Stanley Cup final ended in heartbreak for the Bolts, but owner Jeff Vinik has given the team’s employees — and dozens of charities across the Tampa Bay area — plenty to cheer about. Last week, Vinik flew a portion of the staff, around 150 employees, to Denver for Game 5 of the NHL’s championship series, which was a must-win tilt for the Lightning. They came through with a 3-2 victory that sent the series back to Tampa.

Then, during Game 6, the team announced that Vinik had given $5,000 to all 244 Lightning employees to support the charity of their choice.

“If there’s one (owner) better than him, I’d like to know who it is,” Lightning Head Coach Jon Cooper said, addressing the media on Friday. “He is a remarkable human being. It is never about the Viniks — it is always about everybody else. He’s a treasure.”

Cooper is not alone in his admiration. Sports news website The Athletic just published an in-depth article, titled “How Jeff made the Lightning the NHL’s gold standard,” that’s peppered with praise from Vinik’s fellow NHL team owners. “Since buying the Lightning in 2010,” The Athletic tweeted, “Jeff Vinik has been the owner every fan wishes their team had — and every team owner wishes they could be.”

Vinik and his wife, Penny, have also opened their checkbook, to the tune of $5 million, for the Tampa Museum of Art’s new education center, and of course there’s Water Street Tampa, the $3 billion, 56-acre focal point of Vinik’s non-hockey business ventures and home of Embarc Collective, an innovation hub that’s attracting and developing tech entrepreneurs and startups.