Honestly i would take Tavares i think but the bolded is a little stupid.... He has returned from the bad leg injury which obviously was a problem for him some seasons ago. Stammer has been fantastic the last 2 seasons. Going 4 years back obviously hurts his numbers because he had to come back from an awful injury. Prior to his second injury last season he was a beast and had a great (and injury free) season this year. I know its not the same injury but Oscar Lindberg could barely skate out there for a couple of months when he returned from a hip surgery, took him a long time to skate close to normal again.
Last two seasons:
Tavares: 0,94ppg
Stamkos 1,12ppg
My initial post was about how Tavares has typically been viewed as similar or better than Stamkos since the 14-15 season, since the poster was suggesting that the only reason Tavares is winning now is due to fans wanting him to come to their team with the prospect of free agency. Hence the post was specifically about how they compared since then, to show my point. So no, not stupid.
Regardless, Stamkos was great for 17 games last season then got injured again. This year he wasn't back to his previous normal again either. He was definitely better this year than in '15 or '16, but I wouldn't call him great compared to what he used to be. After a quick start, he slowed down and only finished 12th in scoring, when pre-leg injury Stamkos was always top 5, and he had less than 30 goals, particularly struggling to score at even strength. He had 86 points in 78 games, or a 90 point pace, while Tavares had 84 in a full season. An extra 5-6 points is nothing, especially when Stamkos played with a 100 point scorer.
Combining the two seasons is disingenuous because scoring was up this year with them both healthy, and Tavares played almost a full season last year in a lower scoring environment, at his worst pace in years, and Stamkos only played a small sample in that lower scoring environment at his best level in years. So what we actually have is them being close or Tavares being better over each of the past 4 seasons, except for a 17 game sample size. If Stamkos had played this year like he played from '10 to '13, I would agree with you that it's likely he just took awhile to round into form, but he didn't.
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