Alright, we’ve put this one off long enough. Last up in the reviews of the former Lightning players is The Captain, Steven Stamkos. There was that lingering feeling, especially in the second half of the season, that we might be seeing the last of Stamkos in a Lightning uniform. While we held out hope as long as we could (especially after the team cleared cap with the Sergachev trade) the summer kicked off with the icon of the organization heading to Nashville.

Let’s hold off the future a little longer by delving into the past one more time.

The Basics

Name: Steven Stamkos

Position: Center/Winger

Counting Stats: 79 Games, 40 Goals, 41 Assists, 18:14 TOI

Extra Stats (5v5): 49.30 CF%, 47.73 SF%, 44.14 GF%, 48.04 xGF%, 47.57 HDCF%, .888 On-ice Save Percentage, 12.76 iXG

2023-24 Contract: Final year of an 8-year, $68 million contract

Contract Status: Signed a 4-year, $32 million contract with the Nashville Predators

The Charts

The Review

The charts pretty much sum it up for Stamkos. Offensively it was a good year. Defensively, not so much. Don’t worry, that’s going to be a theme we repeat for much of the top six, so he has plenty of company in that department. If nothing else, things on the ice were exciting when Stamkos, Kucherov, and Point were on the ice.

Still, taken as a whole, the 2023-24 season was another solid one for the organization’s all-time goals leader. For the 12th time in 16 seasons he scored more than a point-per-game as he put up 81 points in 79 Games. He also posted a 40-goal season for the second time in three seasons and for the seventh time in his career. To top things off, the quasi-center/winger won 56% of his face-offs, the second highest number of his career. He stayed ahead of Father Time for at least one more season.

On the power play he remained absolutely elite, scoring 19 goals and adding 20 assists. Only Leon Draisaitl (21) and Sam Reinhart (27) scored more on the man-advantage. As usual he did most of his damage from his office. It’s pretty amazing that after 1,082 games he continues to score from the circle despite everyone and their cousins knowing where he’s going to shoot from. Where is that you might ask?

Stamkos’ proficiency on the power play, along with his usual running mates in Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov, and Brayden Point, helped keep the Lightning afloat early in the season when the team was struggling at 5v5. While we make a lot of even-strength play, power play goals don’t count any less when it comes to actual wins and losses so the fact that Stamkos was able to keep burying pucks with the extra skater was key.

Stamkos himself was a bit of a bellwether for the Lightning’s 5v5 offense. There were long stretches where he didn’t score at normal play, but as the team improved down the stretch he found his scoring touch. He had one 5v5 goal in November. There was a stretch in December and January where he went 18 games without a goal with the teams at full strength, but over the last ten games of the season he potted five to bring his season total to a rather normal 14 5v5 goals.

As usual he ping-ponged back-and-forth on the top two lines throughout the season. According to Natural Stat Trick he played 259 minutes of 5v5 with Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov and 233 minutes with Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli. They were two of the top scoring lines, recording 13 goals and 11 goals respectively. Unfortunately, both trios allowed the most goals as they each allowed 16 throughout the season.

With Point and Kucherov, Stamkos was on the ice for 141 scoring chances against, far and away the highest amount on the team. Even if a top line’s main responsibility is generating offense, they still have to find the way to at least hold their own in their own zone, and unfortunately, that wasn’t the case last year.

One of the issues with how Stamkos generates offense is that it often comes from down low and if there is a shot from the point blocked or a turnover, he’s often behind the play. While he can often catch opposing defenders off guard with a burst of speed, he’s not quite as fleet on the skates as he used to be and was often well behind on offensive breaks the other way, which led to some of those paltry defensive numbers.

It just wasn’t a pretty year for anyone on defense for the Lightning so it’s hard to know if last season was the beginning of the decline for Stamkos or it was an aberration. Watching him in a different system will be interesting, especially one that has traditionally been a bit stauncher on defense.

While the season, and Stamkos’ tenure with the Bolts, might not have had the storybook finish with him lifting the Stanley Cup for a third time, it was still a better-than-average one for the 34-year-old. He showed that he is still one of the best pure scorers in the NHL and worthy of the money Nashville spent to pry him away from the Lightning.