Maybe Stammer needs to train with whoever Johnson trains with next off-season instead of with Gary Roberts??
Seriously though, I thought last season most of us didn't expect much from him; that he just spent that summer training to stabilize his leg. I figured this year he would have gotten (most of) the strength back and would come out explosive (a la Johnson this year). Guess not.
He made a nice move at the blue line to enter the zone in the third (I think), they would have been in on an easy 2-on-1 and he just looked like he got stuck in sand; slow motion; I thought my tv connection dropped for a second there.
I saw that exact play. It's what sparked the word "worrying" in all my posts. He didn't look like an NHL skater on that play. He looked like somebody's dad playing in a senior league. (I think we're talking about the same play, but maybe not.)
This thread is hiarlious, Stamkos was playing like this his contract year and most of you guys wanted to give him 10m+.
He'll probably score in bunches for a few games but these lows are so bad, he's just not effective in anyway except against us. When your supposed star player is a guy you stop depending on to show up but start wondering if he'll show up then there's a problem. When thking of a win coming from this team you're probably thinking Kucherov, Point, Vasi or Hedman as the catalyst - Stamkos will just be there, maybe he'll get a point or two or maybe he'll do nothing but it's rare he's the stirs the cup hese days.
Yzerman saw it too, which is why he was perfectly fine with letting him walk, he doesn't fit the mold of the team Yzerman was trying to build. 8.5m was just high enough that if he did keep regressing it wouldn't be detrimental.
I do think this is worse. Stamkos managed to put up 72 points that year playing primarily with Callahan and Killorn, and one of the worst PP units in the league. And yeah, he was NOT playing like a franchise player despite those points. You, me, and Macho were probably the loudest voices against giving him 10+m, or the 12m that he was rumored to get as a UFA (in hindsight, I think NHL scouts are better than we give them credit, and I doubt he received any McDavid money offers).
But what we're seeing right now, IMO, is a further regression. I can't picture him putting up 70 points without a high-functioning PP, which he did in 2015. And then 64 points the next season. He was still producing at ES in those years, even if that version of him was a shadow of his former self.
I remember GDTs in those years, and, as much as we complained about Stamkos (which was A LOT), there were only a handful of nights where the majority of posters believed he was our worst player, or one of our worst. Those nights stood out. 4 games into this season, and it's kind of the norm.
But what's worse is he's not showing anything physically to make us believe he's about to break out. The "bad" version of Stamkos used to be our 4th or 5th best player. I'm having a hard time seeing him as that right now, with the way he's skating. He looks like the guy we should be considering scratching for Danick Martel, rather than Adam Erne.