Back in mid-September, Sportsnet aired a brief interview segment with the captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Steven Stamkos, expressing his disappointment in the lack of extension conversations the Lightning have been willing to have over the course of the summer. A few days later, Elliotte Friedman, also of Sportsnet, reported that the going notion at the moment is that Tampa Bay "wouldn’t be crushed" to see Stamkos leave next summer.
In an update to the drama surrounding a potential contract extension for the Lightning’s captain, Pierre LeBrun of TSN reports that Tampa Bay general manager Julien Brisebois had already indicated to Stamkos that they would be waiting until the end of next season to address the future between the two parties, but would ultimately like to see Stamkos retire as a member of the Lightning.
Although it is generally unsurprising for most teams to want to wait until after the season to negotiate a new contract, this instance is more peculiar for the Lightning specifically. Throughout the last two offseasons, Tampa Bay has quickly given out sizeable extensions to all of Nick Paul, Erik Cernak, Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev and Brandon Hagel. All of these players have been important pieces to the juggernaut the Lightning have become over the last several years, but they certainly do not have the pedigree of Stamkos in that organization.
At 33 years of age, and with more than 1,000 games played in a Lightning uniform, Stamkos is potentially staring down his last contract as a professional hockey player. Over the course of his career, having spent the last decade as the captain of the organization, Stamkos has been a part of four Tampa Bay teams to reach the Stanley Cup Final, winning two of them.
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