What Happened to Stamkos?

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

His leg

 

[WesMcCauley]

St.Louis traded and broke his leg.

 

[WesMcCauley]

Old, broke his leg, lost his shot, shrank a foot, pissed off a witch, and broke a mirror

saying a 26 year old is old is just dumb. Sure he might have been in his prime in his early 20s but saying he is old is just wrong.

 

[nmbr_24]

I think it is primarily not having St Louis passing him the puck any longer.

 

[PensBandwagonerNo272*]

Hard to get up to stride with so much time off due to injuries, rotating linemates. It would seem the contract fiasco played on his mind too.

I fully expect him to have a monster season this year. Stamkos/Drouin has the potential to be a pairing as elite as Benn/Seguin IMO.

 

[Shakey Rustie]

I honestly don't know, does Stamkos play center regularly or is he more of a winger?

 

[JackSlater]

1. Broke his leg. Was playing arguably his best hockey before that.

2. Linemates and system changed. Stamkos used to play with St. Louis, who suited him almost perfectly, and in a system that was more open than most others in the NHL. Not so anymore.

3. Misguided attempt to play a different style. Stamkos spent last year trying to be a traditional centre, and he just isn't.

4. Goal scorers peak earlier than other players. Its natural that Stamkos would peak early.

 

[SenzZen]

Dougie Hamilton buried him into a goal post.

He let the contract drama play out for too long, too.

 

[VinikToWinIt]

saying a 26 year old is old is just dumb. Sure he might have been in his prime in his early 20s but saying he is old is just wrong.

... Did you stop reading after 1 word? My post clearly was not serious

 

[Ohashi_Jouzu*]

He seems to have gone from one of the best players in the game to one of the best support/complimentary players in the game. There's probably no better player you could go out and get to put beside a star forward, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who can go out and dominate regardless of who he's playing with anymore. He really, really needs someone like Drouin to start earning top minutes and feed him pucks.

 

[CupsOverCash]

I think if he has Drouin on his line this year he will have his best season since he last scored 50. I'm hoping our lines will be:

Palat Stamkos Drouin
Killorn Johnson Kucherov
Namestnikov Filpulla Brown
Conacher Boyle Paquette

I'm sure Coop is going to mix up the lines a lot this year, but I hope he keeps them like this the majority of the time.

 

[DFC]

I think if he has Drouin on his line this year he will have his best season since he last scored 50. I'm hoping our lines will be:

Palat Stamkos Drouin
Killorn Johnson Kucherov
Namestnikov Filpulla Brown
Conacher Boyle Paquette

I'm sure Coop is going to mix up the lines a lot this year, but I hope he keeps them like this the majority of the time.

Any glimpse of Drouin-Kucherov we've seen so far has been absolutely magic. Would love to see them together a bit too. I get that we're trying to get Stamkos going, but he simply might not be part of the deadliest combo available to us right now.

 

[Butchered]

I think linemates are a big part of it. Refusal to play skill with Stamkos drives me insane.

 

[Lebowski]

I'd say his shot and speed were always his two best attributes. As said a few times already, his leg injury definitely had an impact on his speed.

He doesn't have a lot of diversity to his game, but that doesn't mean he cannot be an efficient player going forward. Just look at Ovechkin. He's not the offensive force he once was, but he still scores 50+ goals routinely.

I think the AAV on the contract he just signed is rather fair.

 

[Volodya Krutov]

For someone advertised as a top center, he's more dependent with the quality of his linemates than you would have hoped for. He still produces but he doesn't drive possession and rarely dominates. Leg injury didn't help, neither the contract negotiations, but both are things of the past now, he's going to have a more productive year, particularly if Cooper glues him to Drouin.

 

[Stephen]

Is it me, or has his ability to carry the puck for any length of time in the offensive zone also diminished to next to nothing over the past couple of years? He was always fairly dependent on St. Louis being the puck carrier and has that wonderful ability to "ghost" it but he used to be way better at controlling things.

 

[Korpse]

I think it is primarily not having St Louis passing him the puck any longer.

Yeah there's probably minimal change in Stankos and his game but not have Marty St.Louis there is ultimate factor here. A lot of people like to point to him breaking his leg because that's around the time you can say his production decreased but it's also around the time a certain someone was traded.

 

[sully1410]

Broke his leg so he lost some speed...and he lost MSL.

 

[lomiller1]

Part of it is that now his shooting % "only" in the 16% range instead of the 20% it was at a few years ago. Both are ridiculously high but it could be that 16% is more representative of his talent level.

 

[Jumptheshark]

A few years ago Stamkos was one of the best players in the NHL. He had 50 and 60 goal seasons, 90+ points and he was in his early 20s. Now that he's in his prime you'd think he would be better but he's worse. He hasn't been ppg for the last two seasons I know he had a leg injury but it shouldn't have that much of an impact. What has changed since then.

36 goals last and 42 the year before... Shocked anyone gave him a contract. How did the bolts do the last tword years? We often over look team accomplishments ovet individual accomplishment. Bolts had two good seasons. Stamkos may have helped just a little

 

[Vagrant]

Hockey player prime is getting younger and younger. Usually players produce their most productive seasons before what we actually consider their "prime" age. However, they're usually more complete players between 24-28 than they are before that. The speed of the game and the wear and tear on the body is making it harder and harder to keep up. Remember how many 40 year old skaters there used to be? Not so much anymore. Teams start looking at guys sideways at 35 now. The Vincent Lecavalier, Eric Staal, Brad Richards, Thomas Vanek, Corey Perry, Dany Heatley generation coming to that stage of their careers are massively less effective than stars of previous generations in how they age.

 

[Sky04]

1. Broke his leg. Was playing arguably his best hockey before that.

2. Linemates and system changed. Stamkos used to play with St. Louis, who suited him almost perfectly, and in a system that was more open than most others in the NHL. Not so anymore.

3. Misguided attempt to play a different style. Stamkos spent last year trying to be a traditional centre, and he just isn't.

4. Goal scorers peak earlier than other players. Its natural that Stamkos would peak early.

One of the biggest issues with him imo, he's fine physically but he's trying way too hard to buy into the "all around player" mold that he is not. Guys a shooter forst and foremost but thinks he's datsyuk when he's one of the worst 1 on 1 danglers, or thinks hes Kane trying to thread those passing lanes. I think captaincy has played a role into this, he's a very well respected person/player but not a natural leader by any means, similar to Lecavalier who started changing his game after captaincy. As bad as MSL's exit was he was definitely more of a natural leader than Stamkos, and his play didn't suffer after taking the C.

I don't think Stamkos himself likes the idea of being known as a one-dimensional player which is why he's trying accomodate other elements into his game which clearly isn't working. If he simplified his game he would be as effective as before or close too it even without MSL.

 

[Stephen]

Hockey player prime is getting younger and younger. Usually players produce their most productive seasons before what we actually consider their "prime" age. However, they're usually more complete players between 24-28 than they are before that. The speed of the game and the wear and tear on the body is making it harder and harder to keep up. Remember how many 40 year old skaters there used to be? Not so much anymore. Teams start looking at guys sideways at 35 now. The Vincent Lecavalier, Eric Staal, Brad Richards, Thomas Vanek, Corey Perry, Dany Heatley generation coming to that stage of their careers are massively less effective than stars of previous generations in how they age.

To be fair, that generation of stars was quite inferior to the one that came before and the one that came after. Joe Thornton, Marian Hossa and a few of the higher calibre players are showing a ton more longevity.

 

[Stephen]

One of the biggest issues with him imo, he's fine physically but he's trying way too hard to buy into the "all around player" mold that he is not. Guys a shooter forst and foremost but thinks he's datsyuk when he's one of the worst 1 on 1 danglers, or thinks hes Kane trying to thread those passing lanes. I think captaincy has played a role into this, he's a very well respected person/player but not a natural leader by any means, similar to Lecavalier who started changing his game after captaincy. As bad as MSL's exit was he was definitely more of a natural leader than Stamkos, and his play didn't suffer after taking the C.

I don't Stamkos himself likes the idea of being known as a one-dimensional player which is why he's trying accomodate other elements into his game which clearly isn't working. If he simplified his game he would be as effective as before or close too it even without MSL.

It's odd because before the leg injury he was headed towards a developmental trajectory of being a beastly all around dominant center. But for maximum effectiveness it's probably better he try to be Mike Bossy and not Steve Yzerman.

 

[TheTakedown]

Most goalscorers peak earlier than 26.

Losing an Art Ross-winning linemate doesn't help, either.

this sums it up. He's got a great sniping shot, he's right handed, and he's speedy, but he's lost some of the speed due to the leg injury, then lost some stability with the blood clot injuries, and St. Louis was never really "replaced", they pigeonholed one of Kucherov (awesome talent), Callahan (average middle 6 winger), or Drouin (great talent, but still a rookie) into his RWer, and that's definitely hurt him.

I would have loved to have him on the Rangers to see what he and Zuccarello could have done together--that would have been more magical than Disney on Ice.

Alas, Stamkos is still a great player. He'll follow Crosby's point path in the NHL, probably will continually put up 70-80 point seasons without a hitch. He'll start declining 4 years into his contract into a 60 point player, and then 2 years after that, he'll be a 50 point player. Not the end of the world, and the price you pay for a generational talent.

Luckily, Stamkos does have age on his side. he is still only 25 years old