I wasn't able to watch the game live. But, to echo everyone's comments in here (we have been saying this for weeks), Stammer is a NEW player. I have been one of his biggest critics. But he is controlling play with the puck on his stick; literally for the FIRST time in his career. And he has been shooting relentlessly. On top of this, he is still making great plays to his linemates like he was last year. All together, this version of Stammer (the past 25 games) has been the best one that we have ever seen. Superior, to be clear, to the version we saw right before he broke his leg against Boston. The sustained productivity has gone on long enough to confirm that this is not a blip on the radar. Whatever mental/confidence issues that negatively impacted him the past few seasons are clearly gone. All in all, this is great to see. And for someone who has dealt with so much adversity, he deserves this.
I think it's closer to 35 games now. We've seen Stamkos play well in flashes, but it's been a while since anybody's pointed him out as our worst player on a given night. That used to be a real thing.
Agreed that this is a new player. It's like he's suddenly combined the player he used to be with the player he's been trying to become. I think he had lost confidence in his shot. He mentioned something to that effect in an interview, shortly after the Nashville game, and how, he "hadn't felt the puck come off his stick like that in a long time," or something to that effect.
It's kind of weird that after an off-season where we didn't make any moves, we've had all these improvements. I mean, every single one of our centers is better than last year, even though it's exactly the same group.