This just in: Steven Stamkos will return to Amalie Arena on Monday when his new team, the Nashville Predators, visits his old team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, on a night that may feel more like a family reunion than a hockey game.
Much will be made about the most accomplished player in Tampa Bay history playing for the first time against the team he captained to two Stanley Cups. No doubt, tributes will be played on the scoreboard. There will be handshakes and hugs all around. Smiles will be hard to contain. Tears, too. Some will no doubt wonder what could have been. Why it had to come to this?
Maybe a few fans will jeer while others will sneer at the slow start Stamkos is off to with his new team (1 goal and 1 point in 8 games). He doesn’t look right in yellow and he deserved better than he got at the end. Those who root against him will do little more than show themselves to be certified knuckleheads. They don't root for athletes; they root for laundry.
The return of Steven Stamkos to Amalie Arena will be a sight to see
Since sports usually moves us most when we’re not expecting it (rather than when the marketers tell us it’s going to), there’s a good chance the game will be a dud and that the catharsis everyone wants to feel will not come.
I hope the Lightning win the game but almost as much I hope that Stamkos earns some measure of victory, too — the sort that transcends any one team. A moment so good everyone can enjoy it.
For if there is justice in the sports universe, we will get at least one moment that will linger. You know what I’m talking about.
The whole thing will be over almost as soon as it begins.
The puck is sent across the ice …
Stamkos, positioned on the right face-off dot, uncoils, rapidly raising his stick over his head. The puck is on him so quickly you think he couldn’t be ready except that that there is no act he is better suited to execute, and so, as if by reflex, he is already swinging. He strides into the puck, brings his stick blade from the sky to the ice through the puck and back up to the sky — nearly making a full, clockwise circle — sending a blur toward the net, an act that displays as much force as any single machine-free human being can muster.
Stamkos: Right-hander. Canadian. Good guy. Force of nature. His body language shows the intensity most associate with sports, one area of like in which hustle matters much to the people who care. He once scored 60 goals in a season but he still dives in front of opponent shots like a fourth-liner trying to hold onto a spot on the team.
Yes, we want to see the patented one-timer once more, even if the tally will go up on the “Away” side of the scoreboard.
We want the arena scoreboard operator to risk his or her job and flip the switch anyway. We want to hear it once more — with feeling. When Stamkos scores the scoreboard in Amalie Arena will, we hope, flash once again “Stammer Time.” The display always was, we admit, a little corny. Yet, when it comes to his shot, you really can’t touch this.
Stam! Koze! His name itself sounds like a slap-shot.
One man’s obscene power. May we see him unleash one more one-timer that finds the back of the net.
Tampa Bay won’t be the lesser for it. And Stamkos deserves the moment of triumph.