TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Lightning can advance to the second round of the NHL playoffs tonight with a victory over the Florida Panthers. The game will be played just a few hours from Tampa in Sunrise, Fla. Dedicated local fans will scream and cheer for their team from across the state.
Mark Chaput will be in his office, 13 hours ahead of Tampa, cheering from just outside Tokyo, Japan.
“They’re like, ‘What the heck you are talking about?’ They’re like, ‘You look like the Flash’,” said the diehard Lightning fan living more than 7,000 miles away from Amalie Arena.
About 4,200 miles from Tampa, Andy Findlay will wake up in the middle of the night to cheer on the Bolts from Scotland. He’s been a huge Tampa-area sports fan ever since his 1997 vacation to Florida with his family. While visiting in 2018, he attended a Lightning game with his son against those same Florida Panthers. Findlay’s 10-year-old son, Connor, even saw his face on the giant video screen above the ice.
“I love nothing more than coming over to Amalie Arena and watching the Bolts in person,” said Findlay, dressed in blue Lightning sweatshirt. “I’m glad it’s getting back a little normality. The playoffs this year have shown that little bit of difference.”
Not many Lightning fans live near Findlay in Europe. Chaput guesses there are “five” Lightning fans in Japan, a country of around 130 million people. Still, he’s passionate about his team and gladly shifts his calendar to accommodate game times in the eastern time zone.
“I am distant thunder. I’m making sure I’m giving my support to the team,” said Findlay,” whose all-time favorite Lightning player was Martin St. Louis. “I loved hockey games from afar, and then I went to one and was absolutely hooked.”
A year ago, we all watched from afar as the hometown team earned its crown and its Stanley Cup. The Tampa Bay Lightning captured its second NHL championship from the COVID-19 pandemic bubble in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada by defeating the Dallas Stars.
During the title run, the team coined the phrase “distant thunder” for its fans, who were forced to cheer on the Bolts from nearly 3,000 miles away.
Being “distant thunder” was new to Tampa-based fans. It’s commonplace for fans around the world, who have formed groups on Facebook to chat about games.
Chaput often has to watch the games that are recorded. The video he gets in Japan is through the Armed Forces Network. Sometimes he already knows the final score when sitting down to see his team play. Yet, he still watches. He sometimes gets to see the Bolts through the NHL app and also enjoys hearing local voices like Dave Mishkin and Phil Esposito call the action.
He’s waiting on his Andrei Vasilevskiy jersey to go along with his Kucherov and Stamkos sweaters. He and others have shared photos of ticket stubs and Lightning memorabilia online. It’s a fun online community to be part of for guys like Findlay, who don't have many Lightning other fans to spend time with there in Europe.
“We have a few scattered across the UK,” said Findlay. “We chat on a regular basis about hockey and it’s great to see.”
This year, as the team attempts to defend its championship, fans have been allowed to trickle back into Amalie Arena. About 9,000 wild Lightning fans brought the thunder back in games three and four against intrastate rival Florida Panthers. Fans saw the Bolts take a commanding 3-to-1 lead in the best of seven series.
“What they’re doing now to the panthers the whole league’s taking notice,” said Chaput, who grew up in unincorporated Pinellas County and graduated from Osceola High School.
Chaput remembers going to Lightning games in the then-Thunder Dome in the early 1990s. In order to watch current games, Findlay only has to deal with a five-hour time difference from Tampa. It’s a bit easier to manage than Chaput’s 13. Both men gladly reconfigure their schedules to see the Bolts try to claim a second-straight Stanley Cup.
“They’ve got a shot at running it back,” said Chaput, who paused, grinned, and added, “Kind of like what the Bucs are going to do.”
Chaput has tickets to watch the Bucs face the Dolphins in October. He’s also hoping the Lightning are in town during his visit so he can see him favorite hockey team play, too.
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