Stars captain Jamie Benn sat in silence after Dallas' 2-0 Game 6 loss on Monday night, which handed the Tampa Bay Lightning the Stanley Cup and ended his team's season.

A reporter asked Benn what this group of teammates meant to him. He couldn't find the words to respond. Another reporter asked him about the Stars' improbable run to the Stanley Cup Final over the course of two months, playing inside an empty arena and living in the NHL's playoff bubble in Edmonton, Alberta. Again, Benn was silent, for 16 seconds, before letting out a deep sigh and speaking.

"It was a good run. It's tough. You're two games away from the Stanley Cup," he said before leaving the news conference.

Like their captain, the Stars were emotionally numb after losing Game 6. The No. 3 seeds in the Western Conference when the regular season was paused because of COVID-19, they entered the NHL's bubble with a renewed focus to challenge for a championship. Their run to the Final saw them beat the Calgary Flames in six games, outlast the Colorado Avalanche in seven and shock the Vegas Golden Knights in five in the Western Conference finals.

Their resilient run saw them avoid elimination with a double-overtime Game 5 win over the Lightning, improving to 6-1 in extra time in the postseason. But the Lightning smothered them in Game 6, limiting them to eight shots on goal in the first two periods.

"I know our players weren't very good for 40 minutes," coach Rick Bowness said. "I get that. They didn't let us get going. But I'm proud of our players. They left everything on the ice. No one expected us to get here, but we believed in ourselves."

They believed right to the end, which is why they said the loss devastated them.

"There are not feelings right now," said goalie Anton Khudobin, a surprise playoff hero after starter Ben Bishop was injured. "We stuck together. We stuck to each other. But right now, there is nothing."

Defenseman John Klingberg said the Stars are his "second family," which made the loss hurt all the more.

"We're brothers," he said. "This one stings a lot. It hurts. It hurts a lot. This is the dream, to play on the biggest stage of the world, and you end up losing."

The Stars were hobbled by injuries in the final few games of the series. In addition to Bishop, the team was missing key defensive forward Radek Faksa, Roope Hintz, Blake Comeau and defenseman Stephen Johns.

Dallas forward Tyler Seguin said he'd have to literally wait in line to get to the trainers' room because so many of his teammates were hurting. It's all part of the postseason experience.

"It's fun being on this stage. A lot of guys in this business don't have the opportunity to feel this pressure, and we had a lot of fun with it," Seguin said. "It was great, but other than that there was nothing really positive you can take from the bubble life. It definitely sucked and we're all looking forward to seeing family and friends now."

Bowness famously lamented life in the bubble earlier in the playoffs, telling reporters that "no one knows how tough it is" to be restricted to the NHL's secure zone.

"It's been difficult at times. As we went along, all the tough times living life in a bubble, you kind of move along from it and you get ready for the next series. Fortunately, we kept winning. That helped," he said. "This is a very difficult situation to live in for nine weeks. It's Groundhog Day. So you look so much forward to the excitement of the games.

"When you're competing for the Stanley Cup, it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter the conditions. It's been well worth it to have a chance to win the Stanley Cup."

It was a bittersweet moment for some of the Stars as they congratulated the Lightning.

Khudobin, 34, had a short conversation with Russian countryman Andrei Vasilevskiy, 26, who won his first Stanley Cup.

"You can chirp each other," Khudobin said. "You can say something in your native language. You're going to war against each other. But as soon as everything is finished, you're just a normal human being. So I congratulated him. I'm happy for him. It's really hard to win the Cup. They finally got it."

Bowness, who at 65 years old is the NHL's oldest head coach, had been an assistant for the Lightning for roughly five years, including for their 2015 Stanley Cup Final loss to the Chicago Blackhawks. He congratulated the Tampa Bay players in the postgame handshake line.

"It's hard to describe [the feeling]. You only get so many shots at winning the Stanley Cup, so you're dealing with the emotions of that," he said.

Bowness is actually the interim coach for the Stars, having taken over for the fired Jim Montgomery in December. Dallas management has said he's welcome to return next season if Bowness decides he'd like to continue as coach.

He said that while in the NHL playoff bubble he learned he still has the passion to do it.

"I love the game. I love coaching. What did I learn? That I still have the passion to compete," he said. "I still have the passion to coach. I know I'm getting up there. I know there's more behind me than ahead of me. But I still have the passion.

"I always tell my family that the day I wake up and I don't want to go to the rink, then I know the passion's gone. We're not there yet."

The Tampa Bay Lightning eschewed tradition after Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, surrounding NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and hockey's Holy Grail as a team rather than having it handed off to captain Steven Stamkos alone. The result resembled a jubilant class portrait on the last day of school.

The last five years were a harsh education for this group. Their 2-0 victory to eliminate the Dallas Stars, capture the Stanley Cup and officially pop the NHL playoff bubble was their graduation.

In order to raise the Stanley Cup, the Lightning had to lean how not to fumble it away.

"Once you get to the playoffs, the difference in talent between the teams is minimal. It really does come down to resiliency. Taking advantage of the breaks that you get along the way, and overcoming the ones that go against you," said Lightning GM Julien BriseBois. "Once you have a good enough team to get into the playoffs, it comes down to who is going to find a way."

Here's how the Lightning came to understand that this is the way, and how Game 6 became their graduation as champions.

Freshman Year: Losing in the 2015 Stanley Cup Final

Nine Lightning players who skated with the Cup on Monday night all share the same wound.

"This is going to leave a scar, there's no doubt," said coach Jon Cooper on June 15, 2015, the night the Lightning were eliminated in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final by the Chicago Blackhawks.

After their second straight 100-point season, with 50 wins, this was the first postseason in which the Lightning were met with real championship contender hype. Victor Hedman, Steven Stamkos and Tyler Johnson were 24. Ondrej Palat was 23. Nikita Kucherov was 21, while goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy was just 20, playing four games in that run.

"We've got a group of young men in there, but they're kids at heart," Cooper said, "and they're crushed."

For this class, the Blackhawks were the perfect professors. They were once the young team with enormous expectations, and it took them a conference finals loss to figure out how to win their first Stanley Cup of the Jonathan Toews/Patrick Kane reign in 2010. The 2015 victory over the Lightning was the third championship of their salary cap-era dynasty.

The first lesson was about efficiency. The Lightning lost the Final that season with their tanks completely drained. "The margin of teams is so close. It's the healthy ones that seem to advance. I think we stayed somewhat healthy. Then down the stretch things started not going our way in that department," said Cooper, who counted Kucherov among his walking wounded.

The highest-scoring team in the regular season mustered just three goals in its four losses to Chicago, including a shutout in the Cup clincher. The Lightning were bruised, battered and burned-out, having tied an NHL record for most games in a single postseason with 26. Chicago, by contrast, had learned a while ago that the quicker the path, the stronger the finish. The Blackhawks won two series in five games en route to the 2013 Stanley Cup. Before facing the Lightning, they did have a seven-gamer against Anaheim, but preceded that with a sweep of Minnesota.

The second lesson was about how to win in the playoffs. The first five games of the Stanley Cup Final were one-goal affairs. Chicago won three of them by a 2-1 score.

"When this team only gives up two, we win a majority of those games. The pucks just didn't go in for us. It was a tough time for us to go cold, have the well go dry, especially since we carried this on the whole year," Cooper said. "There was a lot of fight in the dog, but it just wasn't enough."

As we would see in 2020, these lessons would eventually be put into practice.

There was another lesson the Lightning learned in the 2015 Final: That once you get there and lose, you then have a burning desire to get another chance at winning the Stanley Cup.

"The pilot light's been lit to get back here," Cooper said.

Of course, it helps if you don't burn yourself.

Sophomore Year: Blowing the Eastern Conference finals Game 7 -- twice

To reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2015, the Lightning had to win a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden against a New York Rangers team that had won six straight Game 7s. The reason there was a Game 7? Because the Lightning had a chance to win the series in six games, and were blown out at home.

They made the same mistake the following postseason in the Eastern Conference finals, losing at home in Game 6 to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Then they lost in Game 7 on the road, with Pittsburgh moving on to win the Stanley Cup.

It wasn't a series the Lightning were expected to win. Goalie Ben Bishop was injured in Game 1 -- the world didn't quite know what the Lightning had in Vasilevskiy yet -- and Stamkos was out for the entirety of the playoffs until making an appearance in Game 7, due to a blood clot discovered on March 31.

(Steven Stamkos, injured in the regular season, missing the playoffs until a cameo appearance in the Final. The more things change ...)

They still struggled to score that one critical goal and get that one critical defensive stand, but the Lightning had another lesson to learn in this series about staying disciplined when your season is on the line. "Penalties hurt us. It sucked momentum from us," Cooper said of the six minor penalties the Lightning took in Game 7.

In 2020, the Lightning were among the least-penalized postseason teams, at 4.43 penalties per game.

Of course, the biggest lesson from the Pittsburgh loss: Don't blow Game 6 in the conference finals with a chance to eliminate your opponent.

They didn't learn this lesson right away.

In 2018, a year after missing the playoffs -- thanks in no small part to a season-ending injury to Stamkos -- the Lightning were efficient, winning the first two series of the Eastern Conference playoffs in five games each. They were healthy, with Stamkos and their starting goalie both in the lineup against the Washington Capitals in the Eastern Conference finals. They rallied with three straight wins after losing the first two games at home.

But they lost Game 6, again, this time on the road. The lost Game 7, again, this time back in Tampa.

The lesson this time? That the offensive wizardry that they're capable of in the regular season isn't enough to break through against a Stanley Cup-worthy defense. It's something they should have already learned back in 2015, but once again the highest-scoring team in the league couldn't put the puck in the net for the last six periods of the series.

"We pressed and pressed and pressed. They got the breaks that they needed, and we didn't. Over a series, they probably earned those breaks," Cooper said. "It's an empty feeling. I feel like we had a good enough team to be where we were. I felt like we could have won every game."

The lesson Cooper took from this defeat was to drill home a concept to his players in the following season: To learn how to play "the right way" in the playoffs. "We have to win games 2-1, not 5-4," he said during the 2018-19 season.

The Lightning would eventually learn this lesson. But it would take the one of the most humiliating defeats in Stanley Cup playoffs history to get them to understand it.

Junior Year: The Blue Jackets sweep

Mortification is a heck of a motivator, and there's really no other way to describe the Lightning's reaction to getting swept out of the playoffs last season by the No. 8 seed Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round.

Their primary excuse for the disaster was, famously, that they were a victim of their own success: That the Lightning's 62-win, 128-point regular season -- earning them a share of the all-time record for wins in a single season -- put them in a position where they didn't have anything to play for leading up to the playoffs, while the Blue Jackets had played de facto playoff games for weeks just to get in.

"When you have the amount of points we had, it's a blessing and a curse, in a way. You don't play any meaningful hockey for a long time. Then all of a sudden you have to ramp it up. It's not an excuse; it's reality," Cooper said after Game 4. "That's how it goes: You have a historic regular season and we had a historic playoff."

There have always been two ways to read this. One is that it's hard to flip the switch for playoff intensity, something that informed the NHL's decision to give higher seeds the "round robin" in the bubble rather than a bye. The other is the absurdity of the best team in hockey being unable to adapt to getting punched in the mouth by an inferior opponent, which is what happened when the Lightning blew a 3-0 lead in Game 1. They faced adversity and they fell apart. They didn't have the players to get them back on track after the Jackets derailed them.

This was the "come to hockey Jesus" moment that Cooper needed to finally send a message that had been sitting in his outbox for five years. This was the moment that Lightning management needed to make the necessary personnel changes to "play the right way."

GM Steve Yzerman left in 2018 to become the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings. Julien BriseBois, whom Yzerman hired as his assistant in 2010, was named the new general manager in September 2018. Together they had built a core of players that was the envy of the NHL, through smart drafting, shrewd trades and yes, a commitment to analytics. They were the envy of the league not just for their talent, but for the management of their salary-cap space -- something many attributed to the lack of state income tax in Florida.

The catastrophic loss to the Blue Jackets would have shaken the faith of a less confident franchise. Cooper was safe, having just signed an extension in March of that season. But would BriseBois slice into the core of the team, performing an autopsy to find out what happened to its heart?

He would not. In fact, he opted for a heart transplant.

Enter Patrick Maroon as a free-agent forward, fresh off a Stanley Cup win with St. Louis. Enter veteran puck-moving defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk, hungry for his first Cup and eager to mend his reputation after a buyout from the Rangers. At the trade deadline, BriseBois sent first-round picks to the Devils and Sharks for forwards Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow, respectively. Trades that were seen at the time as overpayment are now praised as genius, as those two paired with Yanni Gourde to form arguably the playoffs' most effective checking line. Maroon and Shattenkirk paid off, too: For example, the "Big Rig" eclipsed Dallas goalie Anton Khudobin to allow Shattenkirk to beat him on the power play in overtime of Game 4.

In this way, the Lightning were reminiscent of the Cup-winning 2018 Capitals team. GM George McPhee built the core with assistant GM Brian MacLellan as his right hand. McPhee was fired in 2014. MacLellan took over, and eventually found the right veteran additions to augment that core and transform the Capitals into champions: players like Lars Eller, Brooks Orpik, Matt Niskanen and others.

Like MacLellan was with the Caps, no one was more familiar with his team than BriseBois. He knew what the Lightning needed. He sought it out. He set them up for a championship.

Let's be absolutely clear: The Lightning wouldn't have won the Stanley Cup this season had they not been humbled by the Blue Jackets last season. It transformed them, from their philosophy about playoff hockey to the literal makeup of the team. It's the second time John Tortorella brought a Stanley Cup to Tampa, in a roundabout way.

But to capture the title, the Lightning would need to spend their final year abroad.

Senior Year: The Bubble

Perhaps this is what the Lightning needed to break through: To be hermetically sealed into a quarantine bubble, first in Toronto and then in Edmonton, because of COVID-19. No fans in the building to create that extra bit of tension that would cause the Lightning to snap. No media crowding their locker room to ask about playoff disappointments, as they were relegated to Zoom chats. No travel. No family begging for tickets. No distractions. Just hockey, and each other.

"You don't get to see some of these milestones in your kids' life and your wife's life. Those are the tough parts. That's why, if we can pull this off, that will make it all that much more rewarding," Cooper said.

Perhaps they were motivated to get the heck out of the bubble as quickly as possible, in defeating their old tormentors from Columbus, as well as the Boston Bruins and the Dallas Stars in five games.

• Lesson learned: Be as efficient as possible in your journey to the Stanley Cup.

Of course, the first game of that Columbus series was a five-overtime classic that the Lightning managed to win. Had they lost ... well, one wonders.

• Lesson learned: Don't put yourself behind the eight ball in the playoffs. Also, don't dramatically lose the first game of a first-round series against the Blue Jackets.

The New York Islanders took six tough games to dispatch, with the last two games both 2-1 scores and both going to overtime.

• Lesson learned: If you're up three games to two in the Eastern Conference finals, close it out. Same goes for the Stanley Cup Final.

The Lightning were 6-2 in overtimes. They were 9-3 in one-goal games.

• Lesson learned: Don't rely on your offensive artistry. Muck and grind and get those goals to win close games. Play "the right way."

They were 10-0 when leading after two periods. They were 12-1 when scoring the first goal of the game.

• Lesson learned: Close out your opponents when given the chance.

As BriseBois noted, even with the best playoff education, you need a break or two to succeed. The Lightning were beat up by the end of the playoffs, but were able to keep Brayden Point and Kucherov in the lineup. Dallas, by contrast, was missing a handful of valuable supporting players by the end of the Final. Obviously, having Stamkos in the lineup is much better than not having him, but it's not as if this group didn't know how to play with him out of action.

(The plight of Stamkos through these past five seasons is truly exasperating, as one of the most gifted goal scorers of his generation was faced with all manner and sort of health calamity. But it is worth asking if, during this postseason run, there wasn't a little bit of the "Patrick Ewing Theory" going on here -- as coined by Bill Simmons -- wherein a team loses a superstar player and that paradoxically leads to greater team success.)

The past five years were an education, but every round of the Lightning's 2020 postseason was part of a larger lesson plan. Maybe if they hadn't had to fight through the defense and goaltending of the Blue Jackets, Bruins and Islanders, then the Stars would have found a way to frustrate them in the Stanley Cup Final, just as Dallas caught the Vegas Golden Knights off guard in the Western Conference finals. But the Lightning were more than prepared to break down the Khudobin wall.

It took five years, but the Tampa Bay Lightning finally learned these lessons. They've been a franchise of unequaled hype and expectations, a team whose success has transformed Tampa into one of the NHL's most rabid hockey markets. They're a team of star players who had watched from home as so many of their peers lifted the Stanley Cup. They were a roster constructed meticulously to win a Cup this season, deferring any salary-cap pain and difficult personnel decisions to the offseason.

And now they're the 2020 Stanley Cup champions.

Class dismissed.

The United States will face Canada, Martinique and a team to be determined in Group B of the 2021 Gold Cup after the tournament draw was completed in Miami on Monday.

Reigning champions Mexico, the top-seeded team in Group A, were placed with El Salvador, Curacao and another team to be determined via a preliminary tournament.

The U.S. and Canada most recently squared off in the CONCACAF Nations League with each team winning on home soil. The U.S. has also met Martinique twice in previous Gold Cups, with the most recent result a 3-2 U.S. win in 2017.

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"I think it's a strong group," U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter said immediately following the draw. "Canada has a great generation of players coming through. I think it's going to be a great, competitive match. The other opponents, we'll see who gets in the fourth spot, but it's definitely a good group."

The Gold Cup will be held from July 10 through Aug. 1, with the venues still to be announced.

The remaining groups are comprised of Costa Rica, Jamaica, Suriname and a team to be determined in Group C. Group D consists of Honduras, Panama, Grenada and guests Qatar.

The matchups making up the qualifying tournament were also announced.

Cuba will play French Guiana with the winner taking on the team that triumphs in the matchup between Trinidad & Tobago and Montserrat. That team will be placed in Group A.

Haiti will play. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with the winner squaring off against the winner of Bermuda and Barbados. The team that emerges from that quartet will be placed in Group B with the U.S.

The winner of Guatemala and Guyana will take on the team that emerges from the match featuring Guadeloupe and the Bahamas. The team that emerges from that foursome will be placed in Group C.

El Tri manager Tata Martino has noted how players from the region are beginning to earn spots with some of the world's biggest clubs, including Canada's Alphonso Davies with Bayern Munich and the U.S.'s Weston McKennie with Juventus. That said, he sees the Mexico-U.S. duopoly continuing.

"We can't deny what is happening with players that the United States have playing in Europe and in the best clubs, it is a reality," Martino said on Monday.

"It's also true that we should have the obligation to go far and try to repeat [the victory] like last year. I think that two things are true: Mexico has the obligation and that the United States has a very good generation of young players that play in Europe.

"It's traditionally been Mexico and the United States starting out as the favorites for this competition for many years. For next year, I don't think that will change. We recognize the important players that the United States have, as well as other national teams; Canada has a Champions League winner, there are a lot of national teams that are doing well. It's clear that recently the United States have had four or five boys that have transferred or who have played in the best competitions at club level."

Given the delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 is shaping up to crowded with events, especially for the U.S. In addition to the Gold Cup in July, there's the final stages of the CONCACAF Nations League in June, possibly the Olympic Games in July and August, as well as World Cup qualifying starting in September.

While Berhalter noted that the clubs are required to release players for the Gold Cup, the congested schedule means he'll likely have to pick and choose how to best allocate his resources.

"You know whenever the release date is -- maybe June 28 -- you know the clubs are obligated to release the players to us. This represents more than that," he said.

"It represents relationships and we're in communication and really talking to the clubs and trying to piece together what makes most sense for the player. If I asked you, 'Is it reasonable for a player to play a full season. Then go to Nations League, then go to Gold Cup, then start preseason again without a break?' You know, it's probably not reasonable for that.

"So we're gonna have to juggle the squad a little bit. We're going to still be competing for trophies; but there will be a certain amount of juggling we need to do."

New Zealand have secured a home Twenty20 international series against Australia in late February and early March - at the same time as the team coached by Justin Langer is meant to be playing a Test series in South Africa - as part of a more complete schedule than might have been expected in the time of Covid-19.

On Tuesday, New Zealand Cricket announced that it would go ahead with Test Championship series against the West Indies and Pakistan as outlined in the Future Tours Program, while also fulfilling a commitment to play limited-overs matches against Bangladesh.

The only home series that has fallen by the wayside relative to the original FTP is a tour by Sri Lanka, while the arrival of an Australian T20I side for five matches between February 22 and March 7 will be a considerable boost for the NZC coffers. It is unclear as yet whether this will be a full-strength touring team, given the FTP states that the Australians are due to play a Test series in South Africa in February and March as part of their own Test Championship obligations.

Among other tours in the works, the New Zealand women's team will host England for a series in February and March, while negotiations for an Australian tour of New Zealand is ongoing.

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"Hosting these tours is incredibly important to us for two reasons: international cricket brings in revenue that funds the entire game of cricket in New Zealand and, also, it's crucial that we look after the fans of the game and sport in general, especially during these difficult times," the NZC chief executive David White said.

"We've worked very closely with Cricket Australia in what is, really, a unique set of circumstances - and we can't speak highly enough of their commitment to the global game. The same goes for the West Indies, Pakistan, Bangladesh and England - right across the board in cricket there's been a real spirit of cooperation."

The schedule unveiled by NZC also leaves room for the country's domestic T20 tournament, the Super Smash, to be played largely free of clashes with international cricket in January and early February, after the postponement of a limited-overs tour of Australia originally slated for late January.

The schedule for Pakistan's second overseas tour since the Covid-19 pandemic has been finalised, with their visit to New Zealand over Christmas set to go ahead with virtually no deviation from the original FTP. The two teams will play three T20Is and two Tests from December 18 to January 7, with each international played at a different venue. In accordance with Covid-19 protocols mandated by the New Zealand government, the Pakistan squad will enter a two-week quarantine period in Lincoln once they reach New Zealand in the last week of November.

While New Zealand Cricket's chief executive David White had already confirmed both Pakistan and West Indies would tour the country as previously planned, the schedule for the Pakistan series is only now out. Auckland, Hamilton and Napier will host the three T20Is to be played on December 18, 20 and 22, while Mount Maungunui hosts the Boxing Day Test. The Hagley Oval in Christchurch will be the venue for the second Test, which begins on January 3rd.

"It's always a pleasure to host the Pakistan cricket team in New Zealand and I know there will be a lot of interest in the Test and T20 series," NZC chief executive, David White, said. "Pakistan touring sides have been coming here since 1965 and many New Zealanders have grown up watching the likes of Hanif Mohammad, Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and of course, the great Imran Khan in action. I'm sure the squads coming out here this summer will be similarly steeped in talent and class and will continue the great legacy that is Pakistan cricket."

"New Zealand boast some outstanding cricket facilities with supportive and knowledgeable crowds," PCB director international cricket, Zakir Khan said. "Pakistan have always enjoyed touring New Zealand and have performed well there, and we look forward to similar performances from our side on this tour."

"New Zealand series will be our penultimate series in the ICC World Test Championship with the last series against South Africa at home following this tour. We remain optimistic and committed to finishing on a high in the Championship as it is our endeavour to become one of the top-performing Test playing nations."

The relatively low rate of Covid-19 transmission in New Zealand means the bio-secure bubble need not be maintained following the expiry of the quarantine period. Aside from the largest city, Auckland, the entire nation is operating under what are known as Level 1 conditions, which effectively mean no restrictions on movement besides border control. At one point, the nation went over 100 days without an officially recorded positive Covid-19 case, and a second wave that saw a few hundred further cases has been all but extinguished. By contrast, when the Pakistan side toured England for three Tests and three T20Is over the summer, the bio-secure bubble was strictly maintained throughout the tour.

A press release from the PCB revealed the Pakistan Shaheens, effectively the "A" team, would also travel to New Zealand, with details on their departure to be announced in due course.

Pakistan were last in New Zealand for a limited-overs tour in 2018, with the hosts sweeping the ODI series 5-0, while Pakistan triumphed in the T20I leg 2-1 to rise to the No. 1 ranking in that format. The last time the two sides played Test cricket in New Zealand was in 2016, with New Zealand winning both Test matches.

Australian cricket has lost arguably its most capable executive after the former national captain Belinda Clark announced her intention to resign from employment with Cricket Australia.

In a major blow to the community cricket department that she has extensively reshaped over the past two and a half years, Clark has chosen to finish up as a CA executive after first making it clear she had no intention of following Kevin Roberts into the role of chief executive. Nick Hockley is currently serving as interim, with a wider search still expected to be undertaken.

As one of CA's most accomplished performers over a long time, Clark held roles managing the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, as head of junior cricket and then community cricket as a whole. Vitally, she worked as interim head of team performance following the exit of Pat Howard in late 2018, up until Ben Oliver and Drew Ginn were handed joint roles nine months later.

This meant that Clark was in charge of the department responsible for the men's and women's national teams at the time that included the reintegration of Steven Smith and David Warner after their Newlands scandal bans. It also involved extensive planning for the difficult "double tour" of England for the 2019 World Cup and Ashes series. Australia's cup campaign made it as far as the semi-finals before the Ashes were retained in a drawn series.

"I have loved my time working for the sport and while this chapter is coming to a close after 20 years with CA, a further six years with Cricket New South Wales and a long-standing member of ICC Women's Committee, I am committed to finding new ways to give back to the game that has given me so much," Clark said. "The journey has been exciting and rewarding because of the many amazing people I have worked with across the community, State and Territory Associations, and CA.

"I am grateful for their support and am so proud of what we have achieved together. "My dream is to help young girls develop the confidence, skills and courage to step forward when leadership opportunities arise. This shift in my focus is timely as we navigate through significant global challenges - many of which need strong local and diverse voices to overcome. Cricket has been a major part of my life since I was a little girl growing up in Newcastle and it will continue to be for many years to come."

Clark, 50, has started her own business, The Leadership Playground, which has been devised to educate and mentor young girls int he fostering of leadership skills between the ages of 10 and 15. CA on Tuesday denied the Clark was exiting the executive role so she could move immediately onto the Board as an independent director later this year.

The nominations committee for board appointments is required to find an independent director to replace the outgoing Jacquie Hey, a director since 2012, with the strong preference understood to be for a highly capable female in the role.

Cricket New South Wales had earlier made it clear that it intends to nominate the former state premier Mike Baird as a board director, while wanting to see its current director, Richard Freudenstein, retained as an independent on the nine-person board, comprised of six state-nominated directors and three independents including the chairman, Earl Eddings. Clark is currently a director on the organising committee for the Twenty20 World Cup.

Ellyse Perry, who has been aiming to return from major hamstring surgery, has been ruled out of the remainder of Australia's limited overs series against New Zealand - not that the team's performances in the opening two T20Is indicated she would be needed anyway.

The world's best allrounder, Perry suffered from hamstring tightness after running drills as she reached the final stages of her return from an injury that kept her out of the closing stages of the T20 World Cup back in March.

She will now aim to make her return to playing for the Sydney Sixers in the WBBL next month. Australia' captain Meg Lanning said that Perry would remain with the squad to continue her rehab work, ahead of the third T20I in Brisbane on Wednesday, which will be followed by three ODI fixtures.

"Unfortunately she had some hamstring awareness and has got a low grade strain, so she won't be available for the rest of this series," Lanning said. "She'll remain with the team to continue her rehab and training in the hope of being available at some point during the WBBL. So she won't be playing any part in this series. It's the same hamstring but a different muscle within the hamstring. It's on the minor end, so hopefully doesn't delay it too much.

"It was just during a running session at training that she was doing, she was progressing through her plan, so unfortunate that it's happened but it's on the minor end and she's doing everything she can to be able to make herself available.

"I think she's doing everything she can to be available as soon as possible, it's a very complex injury, and hard to get the timing on when certain things will happen. So hopefully at some point, she's doing the best she can and it's really important to get it right and take the time before we do put her out on the field. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later, but we'll just have to see how it pans out."

In beating New Zealand comfortably in both the opening two matches on Saturday and Sunday, Lanning's team showcased impressive depth, not only to cover Perry but also to find bowling and batting options from beyond the likes of Megan Schutt, Jess Jonassen, Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney. Sophie Molineux, Georgia Wareham, Delissa Kimmince and Nicola Carey have all shone at various times, adapting nicely to the slow and sometimes spinning Allan Border Field.

"I think we've developed that over a period of time, we don't rely on one or two players and as we saw in the first game, Ash Gardner was able to step up and make a winning contribution, so that gives us a lot of confidence that if your top order with the bat for example doesn't fire, that we've still got real depth to be able to get us over the line," Lanning said. "Even when things don't go our way the whole game, we're able to fight through and I think it's a really important quality to have.

"At different times throughout the first two games, people have stepped up and contributed but we don't feel like we've played our best game yet, still a fair bit to work on with both bat and ball, which is really exciting for this group. New Zealand are going to come back hard at us, they've got some real match winners within their side, so we do need to step it up again and hopefully we see that tomorrow.

"With the bat we don't rely on one or two players and I think with the ball as well we've developed that real depth. Delissa Kimmince has been great for us over the last few years, and Sophie Molineux, a young player coming through, is very calm under pressure and certainly for me it's nice to be able to go to her at different points. The other one who hasn't bowled a lot of overs in the series, Nic Carey has really bowled some important overs and it's not easy sometimes to come on and bowl one or two overs at critical points, but I think she's done an excellent job."

Australia's cricketers have exhibited plenty of drive to improve and over the next 12 to 18 months have a clear goal in terms of regaining the ODI World Cup after falling short in England in 2017 when eliminated by India in the semi-finals.

"As a group what we have spoken about is continuing to improve and get better, because if we don't do that, teams will catch up pretty quick and there's a lot of really good teams out there who are trying to push the boundaries and become better as well," Lanning said. "We can't stand still and expect to keep performing and dominating, we need to keep improving our side.

"I think we've done that by bringing people in, but also those players who've been in for a period of time who improved their games - Alyssa Healy speaking about some shots she's introduced to her game. The drive for us to get better is still there, which is great to see, especially given the success we've had over the last few years. So we need to keep getting better and we've got a year now to continue to do that before we get to 2022, which is going to be massive for us. So it's really exciting that's ahead of us."

BALTIMORE -- Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens stumbled against the Kansas City Chiefs once again, losing 34-20 on Monday Night Football in a game that ended their 14-game regular-season winning streak and left them feeling stripped of their cape.

Asked how the Ravens can get over the hurdle of beating the Chiefs, Jackson interjected by saying: "Our kryptonite."

Jackson fell to 0-3 against the Chiefs after passing for a career-worst 97 yards. He's 21-1 against the rest of the NFL in the regular season.

The reigning NFL MVP, Jackson has completed 67% of his passes against the other 31 teams with a 72.9 Total QBR. Against Kansas City, he has connected on 53% of his throws with a 58.5 QBR.

The Chiefs kept Jackson off his game by blitzing him on 35% of his dropbacks, compared to 29% by all other teams, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

"It looked like the same thing from the Tennessee game [2019 divisional playoff] to be honest -- that's all," Jackson said.

The Ravens (2-1) had been the hottest team in the NFL entering Monday. They hadn't lost a regular-season game in almost a full calendar year (their previous defeat was Sept. 29, 2019, to the Browns). Baltimore had led at halftime in 11 straight games and hadn't trailed in the second half at any point in 13 consecutive games.

But Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs scored touchdowns on four of their first five drives to jump out to a 27-10 lead in the second quarter. Baltimore closed to within 27-20 in the fourth quarter, but Kansas City responded with a 2-yard touchdown pass to left tackle Eric Fisher to seal the victory.

"I'm really looking forward to earning the right to try to face them again," Ravens defensive end Calais Campbell said. "I'm very confident if we played the game that we're supposed to, we can hang with those guys."

Even though it's Week 3, this loss could have ramifications for the Ravens in January. Baltimore's chances for capturing the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage in the playoffs dropped to 35%, while Kansas City's chances increased to 43%.

Now, the Ravens have to wonder what it's going to take to beat the Chiefs if they meet them in the postseason.

"They beat us. They out-executed us. They out-game-planned us. They just beat us," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. "That's the story tonight. Big-picture stuff, all of that, I don't know. They're better, obviously. They're a better football team at this point in time."

The Ravens slipped out of first place in the AFC North for the first time since Week 15 of 2018, moving behind the Pittsburgh Steelers (3-0). That ended a streak of 21 weeks of holding at least a share of the lead in the division.

EDMONTON, Alberta -- The Tampa Bay Lightning are the champions of bubble hockey.

Brayden Point scored his playoff-best 14th goal, and the Lightning beat the Dallas Stars 2-0 on Monday to win the Stanley Cup and finish the most unusual NHL postseason in history, staged nearly entirely in quarantine because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, the clock's hitting zeros in an empty arena set off a joyful celebration for a team that endured years of playoff heartbreak and two months in isolation.

"It takes a lot to be in a bubble for 80 days or whatever long it was," said defenseman Victor Hedman, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. "But it's all worth it now. We're coming home with the Cup."

The ultra-talented Lightning, one of the league's top teams not to win the title the past five years, finally completed the complicated puzzle that is the Stanley Cup playoffs, securing their first championship since 2004. They defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets; the Boston Bruins, the league's No. 1 team in the regular season; and the New York Islanders before eliminating the Stars in a marathon through two Canadian bubble sites that featured multiple overtimes and plenty of drama.

Goals from Point and Blake Coleman and a 22-save shutout by Andrei Vasilevskiy in Game 6 were enough to power the Lightning past a pesky Stars team that stayed alive with a double-overtime victory on Saturday in Game 5.

"That last period was probably the longest period of my life," Hedman said just before winning the MVP award. "There's so many emotions at the same time."

In 2004, the Lightning won the title with the league on the verge of a labor stoppage, a lockout that wiped out an entire season. The franchise is used to winning with uncertainty hovering around the league.

Questions about next season, though, were put off for a celebration by the Lightning and the NHL. Getting this done was a triumph of sorts, financial woes notwithstanding. The NHL is the first of the four major North American professional sports leagues to crown a champion since the start of the pandemic.

Tampa Bay's core group closed out the Final with an almost poetic display of what got the Lightning to this point the past several years and months. Their new star in Point scored a power-play goal in the first period with assists from longtime standouts Nikita Kucherov and Hedman, key addition Coleman killed a penalty and scored on an odd-man rush in the second, and Vasilevskiy did his job on a relatively slow night in net.

It was more of a coronation than a challenge, as the dominant Lightning outshot the Stars 29-22 and looked like the powerhouse they've been for much of the past decade.

"The beauty of our team is everyone was chipping in," Point said. "We got tremendous depth. We got contributions from anyone and everyone at different times, and that's what makes this win so special."

In the Final, Tampa Bay's power play was clicking and turned the series around. Point's goal made it 7-for-16 the past five games to decimate the Stars, who were undone by their lack of discipline and couldn't get enough "Dobby" magic from goaltender Anton Khudobin.

The Stars ran out of gas after injuries piled up. Rick Bowness, an assistant for Tampa Bay for five years who was part of the team's 2015 run that fell short in the Final, faces an uncertain future as interim coach.

"I couldn't ask more from our players,'' Bowness said. "So it wasn't enough to beat that team, so it wasn't enough. But it's better than sitting here saying how we could have done this or could have done [that]. We don't second-guess anything we've done."

The Lightning did to the Stars what Chicago did to them in the 2015 Final, when injuries built up. Tampa Bay had Point and No. 2 center Anthony Cirelli playing hurt this time, didn't have injured captain Steven Stamkos for almost all of the playoffs -- and still survived.

"These last six weeks have been really emotional for my family and I, not only on the ice but off the ice," said Stamkos, who played just 2 minutes, 37 seconds in the playoffs but scored a goal in Game 3. "I just want to say to my family: I love you guys so much. To all the friends and everyone who supported us along the way: We love you. We can't wait to celebrate with you."

The painful playoff losses look like mile markers now -- losing three consecutive games to Chicago after going up 2-1, blowing 3-2 series leads in the Eastern Conference finals in 2016 and 2018 and last season's jaw-dropping, first-round sweep by Columbus after the Lightning tied the NHL single-season wins record and won the Presidents' Trophy.

Coach Jon Cooper thought the attitude needed to change from wanting to beat every opponent 9-0 because that's not realistic in playoff hockey. His team went 12-3 in one-goal games this postseason, and he said the Lightning won because they were strengthened by years of "heartbreak.''

"To come back year after year and take our swings and take our licks and be talked about here as the kids who are going to be here every year -- and now we're talked about as the team who can't get it done -- and you know what? We got it done," Cooper said. "And it wasn't without failures along the way."

Commissioner Gary Bettman was on hand to present the Lightning with the Stanley Cup exactly 200 days after his dismal if hopeful announcement that the season would be put on pause with 189 games left.

The league and the players' union worked for nearly four months to iron out where, how and when to play so that 2020 wouldn't join 1919 and 2004 as a year when the Cup wasn't awarded. The plan they came up with was unusual. Like the NBA's, it called for walling off teams from the public for months on end. Unlike the NBA's plan, it called for doing so in two spots, Toronto and Edmonton, while the U.S. grappled with spiking coronavirus cases in too many places for NHL leadership to feel comfortable.

It worked. After more than 31,000 tests, there were zero positive coronavirus cases reported among players, coaches and staff inside the bubbles and just a handful among hotel, arena or restaurant employees. There was nothing close to an outbreak.

Bizarre as it was with no fans and manufactured crowd noise and light shows, the hockey was often top-notch. The expanded, 24-team postseason meant there was hockey nearly every day, sometimes from midday until past midnight, including a five-overtime marathon that was the second-longest game in modern hockey history. In this unprecedented postseason, there were two elimination games on the same day in the same arena.

By the conference finals, Rogers Place, a nearby JW Marriott and the rest of a heavily fenced bubble in downtown Edmonton had become the center of hockey for fans thousands of miles away, with Dallas and Tampa Bay, two of the southernmost teams in the league, settling the Cup in the NHL's northernmost arena.

In all, the NHL played 130 games in a bubble, 25 of them into overtime, before the final horn set off a celebration by Tampa Bay that had to suffice with no fans in the stands and few loved ones on the ice to share the moment. Players embraced one another and took out their phones to call and video chat with those who couldn't be there.

"We were in the bubble for this many days away from our friends and family, our support systems,'' Stamkos said. "We love each and every person that has helped us and allowed us to come here and accomplish our dream.''

The Associated Press contributed to this report.