Playoffs a big problem for Stamkos
There was a time when people questioned Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper for lacking faith in Steven Stamkos.
The 2015 Stanley Cup final comes to mind. Cooper kept Stamkos on the bench in some crucial situations in that series. And from some angles — when you considered Stamkos’s status as the most prolific goal scorer in the game not named Alex Ovechkin — it seemed like folly. A few years later, maybe it’s understandable. Ten years into one of the greatest regular-season careers in recent memory, captain Stamkos hasn’t exactly proven himself a playoff kingpin.
At least, that’s the cruel conclusion in the wake of Wednesday’s Game 7 of the NHL’s Eastern Conference final. On a night that saw Ovechkin arrive in the Stanley Cup final for the first time after potting the opening marker of a 4-0 Washington win, Stamkos and his long-promising team came up short yet again.
The pre-Game 7 narrative focused of Washington’s long history of Game 7 failure. Now it’s the Lightning, and especially their Markham-bred No. 91, who find themselves doused in the unflattering light of in-the-clutch underperformance. Tally up the damage — that’s six career Game 7s for Stamkos and still zero Game 7 points. Stamkos has compiled a measly nine shots on goal in those half-dozen crucibles. And in this particular instance — in a series in which the Lightning led 3-2 — it’s worth noting he had zero points and one shot on goal in a crucial Game 6 loss, too.
Maybe it’s fitting his nickname is “Stammer.” Synonyms include “Falter,” “Wobble” and “Repeat.” This is the same player who emerged from his only trip to the Stanley Cup final with zero goals and one assist in six games.
As much as the hockey world has accused Ovechkin of being unfit to lead in big moments, it’s Stamkos who is building the more compelling resume for post-season underperformance.
Ovechkin and Stamkos are worth comparing because they’re linked by at least one impressive statistical achievement: They’re the only two players in the league to average more than half a goal per game during the regular season since Stamkos arrived in Tampa in 2008.
Over that same span in the playoffs, Ovechkin has nearly kept up his regular-season pace by averaging half a goal a game; that’s the top rate in the league among players who’ve played at least 40 playoff games. Stamkos, in stark contrast, is averaging .33 goals a game in his playoff career. That’s hardly disgraceful. But if we’re intent on fetishizing athletes who bring the heat in the Stanley Cup cauldron, it’s not exactly special. Stamkos’s per-game goal production ranks him 30th among NHLers who’ve played at least 40 post-season games over the same span.
It’s worth remembering it was only a couple of summers ago the Maple Leafs pushed hard to woo Stamkos as a free agent. Toronto was prepared to give him the keys to the kingdom before Stamkos thought twice about leaving the relative anonymity of a no-state-tax market with year-round tee times. For Toronto, it turned out to be a masterstroke of a whiff. In obvious decline at age 28, there remain six long years on Stamkos’s contract. And Toronto would have been paying him something considerably north of his Tampa cap hit of $8.5 million (U.S.).
Stamkos’s advocates would argue it’s silly to judge a player on such a small sample size. His career blank slate in Game 7s might be product of bad luck as anything. And Stamkos had four goals and six points in the Eastern final — not bad for a guy who’s been incessantly ground down by an unenviable laundry list of career-altering injuries. Heck, odds are there’s some kind of as-yet-undisclosed injury that might explain his pointlessness in Games 6 and 7.
“I just know from personal experience, to get this far you need breaks to go your way,” Cooper told reporters in Tampa on Wednesday night. “We pressed and pressed and pressed. And they got the breaks that they needed, and we didn’t.”
Random luck looms large over the game, to be sure. But it’s hard to believe it’s happenstance that all six of Stamkos’s points in the series came in man-advantage situations. If you take a hard look at his numbers, Stamkos has morphed into a power-play specialist. He had just 12 evenstrength goals in 78 games this season. There were 160 NHLers who scored more. Toronto’s Zach Hyman, oftmaligned for a pair of hands not befitting Toronto’s first line, scored 14. The 32-year-old Ovechkin, at times dismissed for making too much of his hay on the power play, scored 32.
Maybe Stamkos will take a page from Ovechkin’s career manual and use a subpar season to fuel a late-career renaissance. On Wednesday night, he certainly claimed ownership of his lack of effect at even strength.
“We have to find a way, our line included, to score five-onfive,” Stamkos told reporters after Game 7. “The team that won the series probably had the more consistent play five-on-five. You can’t expect to win at this time of the year when you can’t score.”
There are those who’d say you probably can’t expect to win a Game 7 when your highestpaid player isn’t more of a factor (although the Lightning, to be fair, are 3-3 in Game 7s since 2011, Stamkos’ goose eggs and all). You win as a team, but you’re paid as individuals.
And so it’s worth asking: If Stamkos has so far proven himself incapable of carrying his squad when it counts, how long before his cap hit is considered a burden too heavy for a Cup contender to haul around?
The Maple Leafs can only thank the hockey gods it’s not their question to answer.