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Much to the chagrin of Steve Yzerman and the the Tampa Bay Lightning, the courting process for their captain and unrestricted free agent to be, Steven Stamkos has officially begun.
The obvious ones remain in the picture; The Toronto Maple Leafs can offer Stamkos everything but Mike Babcock’s extensive suit collection, and hey, who knows, maybe that’s on the table as well. The Detroit Red Wings were able to clear Pavel Datsyuk’s near $7 million salary off their books with last night’s trade with the Arizona Coyotes and are expected to go ‘all in’ on Stamkos. Buffalo Sabres general manager Tim Murray expects the competition to be stiff, he believes that Buffalo’s proximity to Stamkos’ home province of Ontario could serve as a potential geographical advantage in the ‘derby’.
Even Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said he expects to reach out to Stamkos, and some have considered the New York Islanders and New York Rangers to make serious runs.
That’s just the start of the hunt for the game’s biggest soon-to-be unrestricted free agent.
Meanwhile, Yzerman has given no update on talks with Stamkos (not that he would, given the way he’s preferred to handle the talks from the start), and noted that he has no control over what other teams do in their pursuit of a player that’s scored 312 goals and 562 points in 569 career games to date.
There was a rumor that the Lightning upped their heavily criticized previous offer of $8.5 million to Stamkos on up to $9.1 million in an effort to bridge the gap between the two, but that neither confirmed nor denied by Yzerman, a tight-lipped general manager if there ever was one.
The Lightning did, however, ink two pieces of their bottom-six core to new, team-friendly contracts that could potentially help their bid for retain Stamkos, as J.T. Brown signed a two-year contract worth $2.5 million ($1.25 million cap-hit) and two-year deal worth $1.625 million for Cedric Paquette ($812,500 cap-hit). With those deals, the Lightning have over $18 million in cap space.
And as teams make their pitches to Stamkos from now ‘til next Friday, they will need every penny.
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.