If the Tampa Bay Lightning win, will they touch the trophy?

1:49 PM ET

The first team to get a crack at advancing to the Stanley Cup finals is the Tampa Bay Lightning, who face the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals Tuesday. If the Lightning win, they will be presented with the Prince of Wales Trophy, and a question undoubtedly will come up: Will the players “touch” the conference trophy? And, should they?

The prevailing wisdom in the NHL is that the only trophy that should be touched and raised is the Stanley Cup, and those who touch the Prince of Wales Trophy or the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl (awarded for winning the Western Conference) are doomed to fail in the finals.

Just think: No team has touched the conference trophy since the 2010 Philadelphia Flyers, who ended up losing in the Stanley Cup finals. Since the 2004-05 lockout ended, three teams have touched the conference trophy, and those teams were 1-2 in the Stanley Cup finals.

If the Lightning win, they will be the first team to return to the Stanley Cup finals the year after losing in the finals since the 2009 Penguins. That year, the Penguins decided to “touch” the Prince of Wales trophy after they won the Eastern Conference. The previous year, they did not touch the trophy, and they lost to the Detroit Red Wings in the Cup finals.

“We didn’t touch the trophy last year, and obviously we didn’t have the result we wanted,” Sidney Crosby said after winning the East in 2009. “We figured we’d touch it this year. Although we haven’t accomplished exactly what we want, we still accomplished something here. You know, we can still enjoy it.”

The Lightning did not touch the trophy last year. When they won Game 7 at Madison Square Garden, team captain Steven Stamkos posed with NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly in front of the trophy …

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