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Front office head
Steve Yzerman and the Tampa Bay Lightning would like an answer -- or maybe just something, anything -- from
Steven Stamkos, and soon.
Stamkos, who has spent his entire NHL career as a member of the Lightning since the club drafted him first overall in 2008, can become the game’s greatest unrestricted free agent of all time on July 1st, though the Lightning would prefer it did not get to that point.
“We’re doing all we can to sign him,” Yzerman said to
the Tampa Bay Times earlier this week about the Stamkos situation. “For us, we’d like to know sooner than later.”
Still, all’s been silent on the Stamkos front, and there’s been no real change in the status. In fact, “Nothing new to report” has basically become Yzerman’s motto at this point.
Given Tampa Bay’s long list of players to re-sign this summer --
Nikita Kucherov is the big restricted free agent to keep in the mix, along with guys like J.T. Brown, Alex Killorn, Vladdy Namestnikov, and Cedric Paquette -- the Bolts not only have an NHL salary cap to work magic with, but a cap on what they can legitimately offer to Stamkos, too. By now, we know of the eight-year, $8.5 million per year offer the Bolts made to No. 91 during the regular season, and how quickly it was shot down by the Stamkos camp. But is it possible that that was the best Yzerman can really offer?
If Stamkos agreed to that deal, that would leave the Lightning with a little more than $10 million to re-sign Kucherov, Brown, Namestnikov, Paquette, and maybe Jonathan Marchessault. Doable? Possibly, but would it ever be close to the cap ceiling. That’s unless Yzerman can find a way to free up some cap space with a
Matt Carle or maybe
Valtteri Filppula trade out of town.
So, in a way, $8.5 million per year may actually be the best Yzerman can do for his captain.
That’s opened the door for speculation, and the idea that the Lightning could get their offer blown out of the water by another Atlantic Division team, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings (if they can find a way to successfully dump the Pavel Datsyuk cap hit), or even the Buffalo Sabres.
“There’s a lot of speculation that [Buffalo Sabres] are going absolutely all-in on Steven Stamkos. I mean, some of the numbers being rumored – and I always hate throwing out or building off rumors, because as an Insider, our job is to separate fact from fiction,” TSN’s Darren Dreger
said on TSN 690. “But Newport isn’t talking and neither is the Tampa Bay Lightning, so nothing has changed there. But some of the numbers being speculated on are upwards of $12 million per year coming out of Buffalo.”
Point blank, the Lightning could not match such an offer from Buffalo, or even come close to matching that, and that’s what it could take to keep a player that’s scored 312 goals and 562 points in 569 career games in town, even if winning remains the primary objective for him. And even if the ‘winning’ argument is the greatest thing against Stamkos leaving Tampa, a Buffalo group built around Jack Eichel, Ryan O’Reilly, (maybe, if he were to sign in August) Jimmy Vesey, and the plethora of other pieces the Sabres have or will build up, would put Stamkos in that ‘winning’ territory. The same can be said if the Maple Leafs when they draft Auston Matthews and continue to build towards an actual image.
Still, you’d think that Stamkos’ best chance to win now remains in Tampa Bay, and that the familiarity of the team, area, and system could play big factors when it comes to his future. But is it enough of a factor that makes the 26-year-old willing to leave maybe $3.5 million a year on the table?
Nobody ‘cept Steve knows, and that Steve ain’t Yzerman. And that’s a problem for the Lightning.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
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