Tampa Bay’s Stamkos in rare company as injured Cup captain
EDMONTON, ALBERTA (AP) » Steven Stamkos greeted Game 4 overtime hero Kevin Shattenkirk with a hug in the tunnel after the game. After the Tampa Bay Lightning missed out on their first chance to win the Stanley Cup in double overtime a night later, Stamkos walked into the locker room to re-energize teammates.
Stamkos wasn’t playing, but he was still the captain.
He put his gear on with three or four minutes left in the Lightning’s championship clincher Monday night and became the first captain in more than 50 years to accept the Cup when not playing in the final game. After leading the Lightning while fighting to come back from injury and playing less than three minutes in all playoffs, it was a no-brainer for Stamkos to lift the hallowed trophy over his head first.
“You dream about this forever,” Stamkos said. “You get the Cup, you get the Cup. So many guys would do anything in the world for a chance to win the Stanley Cup and there’s so many great players that have played this game and haven’t had a chance to experience what we just experienced.”
The late Jean Beliveau, in 1968, was the last captain to miss his team’s Cup clincher because of an ankle injury. Montreal Canadiens teammate Yvan Cournoyer did so in 1977 while out after back surgery, though the team gave the “C” to Serge Savard in his
absence.
Cournoyer, now 76, saw a lot of himself in Stamkos.
“When you’re the captain, then you’d be there anyway,” Cournoyer said by phone Monday. “They know what you did all year and the people respect us. He’s a big part of it. To win the Stanley Cup, you need everybody. You need a captain, no matter if he’s hurt, and you need everybody together.”
Stamkos sounded just like Cournoyer in his postGame 6 comments, in the aftermath of living out his dream.
“Just to be out there and celebrate with the guys, every single person — it was something we talked about at the beginning of training camp, that it’s not just going to take 20 guys to win the Stanley Cup,” Stamkos said. “It’s going to take every single guy who was in this bubble and more, and I’m so proud of each and every one of them.”
Lanny McDonald, in 1989, was the last nearmiss of a captain not being in the lineup for a Cup clincher. The grizzled veteran was a healthy scratch for the Calgary Flames in Games 3, 4 and 5 and got back in for Game 6, scoring a memorable goal to help the franchise win its first title.
McDonald was a healthy scratch, not injured, so he couldn’t perfectly empathize with Stamkos. But he watched Stamkos score his iconic goal in Game 3 of the final — in his only 2:37 of playoff action — and thought it was more like a Wayne Gretzky gem than his 31 years ago.
“I was the happiest guy to see him score that goal,” McDonald said. “I was sitting watching with one of my sons and two grandsons and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to see that again.’”
Tampa Bay never saw Stamkos on the ice again after his cameo, which ended when he aggravated the core muscle injury that kept him out since Feb. 25 and was operated on in March. But players and coaches saw plenty of him in the locker room and around the bubble — the longtime face of the franchise not shying away from his responsibilities.