Stamkos Moves to Within One Point of Milestone

Steven Stamkos scored a power play goal Tuesday night in Boston to record career point 999. Stamkos has the opportunity to reach the 1,000 point milestone Thursday night when the Tampa Bay Lightning take the ice again in Philadelphia.

After a three point outing Monday in Buffalo that included the overtime winner, Stamkos needed two more points to reach 1,000 in Boston.

The mark seemed to be destiny after Bruins’ captain, Patrice Bergeron recorded his 1,000th career point recently against the Lightning in Tampa, but it was not meant to be.

Stamkos will almost surely record a point Thursday against a Flyers team that had lost 10 straight games before beating the Islanders on Tuesday.

Whenever he does reach the milestone, Stamkos will become just the eighth active player in the NHL to have over 1,000 points. He will also be just the fifth of those players to reach the mark in fewer than 1,000 games played.

As we outlined a few weeks ago, this season will be full of milestones for Stamkos. He already reached the 500 assist mark recently and is also coming up on 500 goals.

Stamkos will go down as one of the game’s all-time great scorers, but the fact that he will reach 500 goals and 500 assists around the same time speaks to how complete of a player he has become. He is no longer just a goal scorer and his assist numbers back it up.

For context, Alex Ovechkin, who has the chance to become the NHL’s all-time goal leader, currently has 153 more assists than he does goals. There is no disputing Ovechkin’s incredible ability to score, but Stamkos’ assist totals reflect a player that looks to create just as much as he looks to put the puck in the back of the net.