The True Greatness of Steven Stamkos
Once again, sorry for the delay in between posts, but it has kind of been a dead time for the Tampa Bay Lightning. While other teams are fighting for the chance to play the Stanley Cup, all that is happening in Lightning land is the rumors of who is going to be running our organization. Enough of that though, the reason for this post is Steven “Mother F’n” Stamkos.
As we all know, Steven Stamkos tied Sidney Crosby for the league lead in goals. How much pub did Stammers get for this, about 0. Crosby got all the hype, and maybe rightfully as his team made the playoffs, and Stammers didn’t. What Stammers was able to accomplish in his second season is pretty remarkable though. 50 goals have been scored in one season a total of 185 times in NHL history. That’s pretty astounding in itself. So since 1944, a total of 66 years, on average, 3 guys per year have hit the 50 goal plateau. Since 2000, only 18 players have hit the mark, much less than the 3 per year average. Looking over the past 15 years, only players that most would classify as superstars have eclipsed the mark, the only guy maybe not on that “superstar” list being Milan Hejduk, who has 335 goals in his career, and is obviously no slouch when it comes to putting the puck in between the pipes. He is the third youngest in NHL history to hit the 50 goal mark.
The rest of the list includes guys like Alexander Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuck, Sidney Crosby, Danny Heatley, Vincent Lecavalier, Jaromir Jagr, Jarome Iginla, Pavel Bure and Joe Sakic, all players who are undoubtedly elite or were elite (Bure and Sakic).
If he were to have a 15 season career, about average for most superstars, taking half of the games out of his rookie season for Barry Melrose being an asshole, and then him having to become integrated into the offense, and then averaging that out for a career, Stammers would be on pace to score about 733 goals. That is with an average of 80 games played per season for 15 years, which includes the season he just had. That would put Stammers at 4th all time on the NHL scoring list. I don’t think those numbers are far fetched considering his lack of injury history, and the progression that he has shown in just 1.5 years in the NHL.
Stammers 24 power play goals places him 9th all time in NHL history for single season power play goals. 9th!!! That is incredible for a kid who turned 20 during the season. He also ranked first in the NHL in power play points with 41. Some other milestones this season include his 18 game point streak during which he was the youngest player in NHL history to have such a streak.
Two stats that I thought were quite interesting were his 14 goals while trailing by 1 goal and his 16 goals while tied, 5 of which ended up being game winners. He wasn’t burying meaningless goals, although our team was playing in many meaningless games. His 17.2% on shots ranked 31st in the NHL.