At the intersection of brotherly love and heartless work, the Tampa Bay Lightning found themselves separating one of the closest, most successful and longest-lasting duos in the NHL this week.
Victor Hedman didn’t quite get over Steven Stamkos’ move into free agency as he signed a four-year, $32 million extension with the Lightning on Tuesday.
You’ve never seen a man so frustrated after getting a huge contract that will last him into his late 30s. Hedman couldn’t even crack a smile.
“It’s obviously very sad to see your friend leave and play somewhere else,” he said from his home in Sweden during the off-season.
They have played together since 2009 — appearing in more than 1,200 games each for the Lightning and twice participating in the team’s Stanley Cup run after reaching the pinnacle of the sport.
Stamkos and Hedman worked hard in grueling practices and took their competitive nature to the golf course whenever they could. They grew up together, attended each other’s weddings, started families, and never dreamed of a day when Stamkos would sign with the Nashville Predators and Hedman would receive the same terms from the Lightning.
“It would be hard to imagine walking into the locker room and going to Amalie Arena and not seeing him on the ice,” Hedman said. “It would be very strange.”
To be honest, things have been a little weird between Stamkos and the Lightning front office for a while.
This helps explain how we reached the breaking point.
Stamkos still doesn’t fully understand why general manager Julien Brisbois let last summer pass without even discussing a potential extension — a frustration the Lightning captain publicly expressed on the opening day of training camp in September.
After signing a four-year, $32 million contract with the Predators on Monday, Stamkos marked it as the beginning of the end.
Or as he said: “The writing is on the wall.”
However, the two sides engaged in a series of negotiations during the summer transfer window that stretched into last week, exploring a number of contract ranges and possibilities before finally focusing on a long-term deal that would keep average annual salaries as low as possible and maintain the club’s ability to deal with the salary cap.
Brisbois is a decisive thinker who is not afraid to make unpopular or unconventional decisions, many of which helped build the Cup-winning teams in 2020 and 2021.
Despite being fully aware of who Stamkos is and what he means to Tampa — “I would say he’s probably the best spokesperson for an organization in the league,” Brisbois said. “He’s very articulate, genuine, honest, thoughtful, insightful” — the general manager approached the contract talks with a specific vision for how the next Stamkos deal would fit into the Lightning’s overall image and didn’t deviate from it.
“Ultimately, there were different scenarios and structures and ways to put a contract together that I felt were in the best interest of the organization,” Brisbois said. “There were multiple contracts that could have worked. Steven had multiple contracts that could have worked for him, but ultimately there was no overlap, and that’s why we couldn’t make a deal.”
The Lightning’s best offer over eight years was in the $3 million range in average annual value — far less in total than Stamkos received in his four-year contract from Nashville.
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Now, it’s not entirely fair to compare apples to apples.
Stamkos said what he would have accepted by staying in Tampa and what he was seeking on the open market were two different things.
“When you’re in one place for a really long time, you’re always trying to make it work and stay, and there’s compromises on both sides,” he said. “So it was a very different situation than being a free agent on the open market and teams trying their best to show you how valuable you are if you can get into their organization.”
Stamkos was willing to offer a hometown discount, but with the July 1 transfer window approaching, he felt like he was being asked to offer more than he could get in return.
“That’s the hardest part, trying to hold on to something that maybe isn’t trying to hold on to you,” he lamented.
Compare that to the way the organization handled Hedman’s situation, locking him into a new contract after a full year of unrestricted free agency. The Lightning did the same thing with the big man in 2016 after initially allowing Stamkos to hit unrestricted free agency after just two days, and the organization even took a different approach to its second NHL contracts before that.
Under former general manager Steve Yzerman, Stamkos’ base contract was allowed to expire in 2011 despite already having scored 50 goals in his season, and Hedman signed a contract extension with seven months left on his contract.
It’s more about philosophy than anything personal: The Lightning are betting that a 6-foot-7, wind-skating defender who has played more than 20 minutes a game for 15 straight seasons will be harder to replace than an elite scorer coming off a 40-goal season at 33 who needs to keep producing offensively to be effective.
Hedman’s situation is the exception, not the rule, Brisbois explained, noting that most high-quality NHL players in recent years have had to wait for their fourth contracts rather than sign an early extension — citing Patrice Bergeron, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Joe Pavelski and Claude Giroux as examples.
Tampa Bay also feels it has already found a replacement for Stamkos by signing Jake Guentzel to a seven-year, $63 million deal on Monday. He is five years younger than the departed captain and is a big-game scorer who Bresbois believes will fit into the team’s culture.
“It’s the Bolt who hasn’t played with Bolt in the past. Today we’ve fixed that to some extent,” Brisbois said.
Julian Brisebois moved quickly to replace Steven Stamkos’ offensive line when he became unavailable. (Ron Chinoy/USA Today)
Although Stamkos and the Lightning front office never envisioned things going this way, they remained extremely respectful when describing the circumstances that led to the split.
Bryce Boa praised Stamkos as a future Hall of Famer and wished his family happiness. Stamkos expressed his gratitude for the “first” level the organization and the city have taken for him.
“The memories I had in Tampa will override any bad feelings or emotions I had throughout this process,” Stamkos said. “These are temporary. These are emotional decisions, and as you know, over time they usually go away.”
What will remain unbroken is his relationship with Hedman, even if only one of them gets the chance to spend their entire career with the Lightning.
“Before we were teammates, we were great friends, and we always will be,” Hedman said. “At best, yes, we would have loved to finish our careers in Tampa together. But this hockey is a business at the end of the day.”
(Top photo of Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
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