Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Stamkos, Lightning are at least negotiating

Steven Stamkos

Steven Stamkos

AP

If nothing else, Steven Stamkos and the Tampa Bay Lightning are at least discussing a contract extension.

Odds are, we won’t be fed many details about the proceedings, but here’s what Stamkos shared with the Tampa Bay Times: the sides are in the “middle stages” of discussions - whatever that means - and it sounds like he’s willing to chat during the 2015-16 campaign.

The 25-year-old doesn’t expect his situation to be a distraction for a team hoping to follow up its 2015 Stanley Cup Final run, either.

“My teammates know the kind of person that I am, the type of leader that I am,” Stamkos said. “I’m going to do everything possible to help our team win games. As long as that’s the mentality, nothing else should really bug us.”

Stamkos’ comments may ease the anxieties of many Lightning fans, although a quick look around Canadian media would quickly ratchet it up again.

Really, how could you not be a little unsettled after reading talk of Stamkos possibly becoming “the king of it all” in Toronto?