Stamkos excited to face Team USA

When Team Canada last lined up against Team USA in a truly meaningful game, Steven Stamkos didn’t watch.

It was Feb, 21, 2014 and the Canadian Olympic team was about to face off in a huge semifinal clash with the rival Americans at the Sochi Winter Games. Canadians across the globe were tuned in to the game, knowing that a victory would punch Team Canada’s ticket into the final and a shot at a second consecutive Olympic gold medal.

But of all the millions of Canadian eyes that were glued to their televisions to watch, none of them belonged to Steven Stamkos.

Devastated that his months of rehab from a broken leg still hadn’t left him healed enough to be a member of Team Canada, Stamkos needed to clear his head. To maintain his sanity, he looked to hit the reset button on his emotions and try to wipe out the disappointment of not being able to represent his country, difficult as that might be.

So, he did what he thought was best. He escaped. By jumping on a plane to the Cayman Islands.

“After I got the news I wasn’t able to go, I had so much mental and physical energy wiped from me, I needed some space,” Stamkos recalled on Monday. “It was pretty gruelling what I was doing to try to get back to play in the Olympics. And to feel as if I was ready pretty much mentally and physically and then going to the doctor and not being able to, it was pretty crushing.”

After Canada defeated the Americans 1-0, he did catch their 3-0 victory in the gold medal game against the Swedes.

“I knew it’d be a great game,” he said. “I had a lot of friends on that team.”

Some 30 months later, Stamkos finally is getting his chance to represent his country in a best-on-best tournament, this one the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

Of course, there were questions kicked around in the media that he might not be the most popular dude in the GTA these days, given his choice this off-season to resign with the Tampa Bay Lightning rather than the hometown Leafs. But those concerns were quickly squashed on Saturday when he received a warm ovation from the Air Canada Centre crowd.

“That was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said.

On Tuesday, Stamkos will line up with linemates John Tavares and Ryan Getzlaf to face the Americans.

This time, he won’t have to worry about whether to watch a Canada-USA game.

This time, he’ll be part of it.