Seen Stamkos! Lightning captain continues to amaze in 1,000th NHL game
ELMONT, N.Y. — There was no easy segue into it. Steven Stamkos hates losing, and after a frustrating 6-1 loss to the Islanders on Thursday, he was hardly in the mood to celebrate.
This season has been full of milestones for the Lightning captain. He reached 1,000 points and 500 goals, both in wins. On Thursday, he became the second player to play 1,000 games all with the Lightning, joining Vinny Lecavalier, a feat that’s an ultimate indicator of longevity in hockey.
But Stamkos was frustrated that it came in a loss.
“It’s certainly dampened by the results of the game,” he said, sitting at his stall inside an empty locker room at UBS Arena. “Anytime you have a milestone, you want to celebrate with your teammates after a win, so I guess when you play 1,000 games, you’re going to have ones that aren’t very good, and that was one of them.”
The conversation turned to the “Seen Stamkos!” T-shirts that his teammates wore into the arena, a homage to the aggressive marketing campaign the Lightning launched in anticipation of drafting Stamkos with the top overall pick nearly 15 years ago, with a slight adjustment. The shirts placed the number 1 next to the “k” in Stamkos’ surname to signify his 1,000th game. And the question mark in the original version of the slogan was changed to an exclamation point.
A slight smirk crept onto Stamkos’ face. “I haven’t seen that shirt in a long time,” he said.
If you lived in Tampa Bay in 2008, the “Seen Stamkos?” slogan was all around the area: billboards, bumper stickers plastered on street signs, airplane banners. They drummed up hype and hope for an organization that had fallen on hard times and had seen top-to-bottom turnover in the four years after winning its first Stanley Cup in 2004.
Most of his teammates who wore the shirts Thursday didn’t know the backstory. Only forward Corey Perry had played a full year in the league before Stamkos was drafted. When Stamkos was taken No. 1 overall on June 20, 2008, defenseman Mikhail Sergachev was five days shy of his 10th birthday.
“It was pretty nostalgic in terms of bringing back some really cool memories of the beginning of the journey,” Stamkos said, “and obviously really appreciative that the guys wore them.”
In 2008, there was concern about the campaign, especially from incoming general manager Brian Lawton, hired by new owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie. Lawton, a former NHL player now an analyst for NHL Network, knows the pressure that No. 1 draft picks face. He was the top overall pick in 1983 by the Minnesota North Stars. In 2008, he worried that veteran players would sour seeing an 18-year-old getting so much attention.
Lawton remembers turning a corner at Amalie Arena (then the St. Pete Times Forum) no more than 100 feet from the Lightning locker room and seeing a “Seen Stamkos?” sticker on the wall.
“I’d be like, ‘Take that … thing down,” Lawton said Friday. “It was everywhere when I got here. I never worried about him. But I always had strong thoughts about that or any high pick in today’s world.
“There’s nothing that was going to stop him from being as great of a player as he is. I didn’t know that he would be beloved by his teammates immediately because of the way he handled himself. He never big-timed anybody. You wouldn’t know if he was first pick of the club or the 101st pick by the way he approached practice, the way he handled himself with veterans, just the way he lived his life.
“He didn’t show up in a brand-new sports car. He’s a humble kid. He’s got a great family. He’s the full package. A lot of times it looks that way and it isn’t. But it was an incredible campaign, and he’s lived up to every thought you could have had about him as a player.”
Now, Stamkos is the Lightning’s all-time leader in goals (514) and points (1,052). He has captained two Stanley Cup championship teams and took the Lightning to a third straight Cup final last year with his first 100-point season at age 32. He has overcome numerous injuries and setbacks (broken leg, torn knee ligaments, blood clots, core muscle surgeries) and remains hungry for success. He’s 38 games from passing Lecavalier for the team record in games played, 1,037.
“No one really knew what those T-shirts meant (in 2008), and hopefully a lot more people do now,” Stamkos said. “Fifteen years, it’s a long time, but again, (I’m) just proud to have worn the same jersey for the entirety of that. When a team selects you with the first overall pick, there’s certainly a lot of pressure and expectations that comes with that, and you just want to live up to that.
“And hopefully when it’s all said and done, you can look yourself in the mirror and say that you gave everything you had. And up until this point, I can say I have. I’ve been through some really tough times, and (I) have fought back and worked extremely hard to continue, and it’s been a heck of a ride.”
Contact Eduardo A. Encina at eencina@tampabay.com. Follow @EddieintheYard.
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