Stamkos staying positive for his kids, Predators despite frustrations entering Global Series

It has been a season of frustration for many on the Predators, so much so that it spilled over in a recent postgame interview by Ryan O’Reilly, who said after a game last week that “I’ve had one good year in my career,” an interview that he later said he regretted, calling it “whiny.”

But O’Reilly has seen Stamkos handle everything that has happened, everything he has been dealt, as well as possible.

“I think he’s done an incredible job just being around the room, the leader that he is,” O’Reilly said. “Always saying the right thing and doing it. It feels like he’s not affected by anything and that’s tough to do.”

Stamkos, in some ways, has practiced for this.

It’s not the first time the forward has dealt with adversity. Stamkos has fought through multiple health challenges, from the broken leg that cost him his chance at the 2014 Sochi Olympics to the blood clot and lateral meniscus tear in 2016 to the abdominal core muscle injury in 2020, among others.

“Coming back from some of those injuries, I’m sure there’s times where certainly other people thought that you were never going to get back to a certain level or you start to doubt that a little bit just based on your physical limitations, but I feel like I’ve tried to adapt to that,” Stamkos said. “And sometimes you just have to look yourself in the mirror and that’s what I’ve tried to do is just continue to grind and hope it gets better.”

To Stamkos, each new day is a chance to get momentum, to get confidence, to get back to being himself.

He has no interest in shutting down, in playing the “poor me card,” instead trying to take the disappointment and shelve it, approaching each game as a chance to do better and be better, to find a way out of a funk that has leveled him for the past year-plus.

He is finding the mindset that works for him.

“It just comes with age and experience and perspective, I think,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been around this game a long time and seen the ultimate highs and some really bad lows. Perspective matters, right? You want to go out there and understand the situation that we’re in and getting a chance to play in the best League in the world, you find some other motivations too sometimes.”

That’s where those kids come in.

And his teammates, who have seen so many positives.

“He’s been a great, great person for us, he’s been great on the ice, great off the ice,” forward Filip Forsberg said. “I think he’s getting more and more comfortable. Being in a place for that long and then having to change, I can only imagine what it would be like. I think he handled it really well despite all the adversity we were going through last year. And I think this year he looks more comfortable, he’s taking more of a leadership role.”

There’s some extra salt in the wound this season, though, in the form of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Stamkos, who might otherwise have been a fixture for Canada during his career, broke his tibia on Nov. 11, 2013, getting tied up with defenseman Dougie Hamilton and crashing into a goal post in a game in Boston. It cost him that Olympics. The NHL hadn’t allowed players to go back until this season.

“Listen, it’s something I wish I would have had the opportunity to do, no doubt,” he said. “But it’s just one of those things that probably just wasn’t meant to be. … You look at it, you could have had the chance to play in three and you play in zero. That’s just the way it goes.

“Some guys play 20 years, they don’t get a chance to be in a Final, so I’ve been fortunate enough to play in four of them.”

That’s the 10,000-foot view of his career, with Stamkos on the brink of 1,200 games (1,182) and 1,200 points (1,194), with two Stanley Cup rings, two wins of the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy, a captaincy, four trips to the Final, and a future as a Hall of Famer.

The now, though? That’s harder to see his way through.

It is not what he wanted it to be. But, for Stamkos, tomorrow is another day, another game, another chance to be the person he wants his children to become.

“I think obviously things haven’t gone as good as we wanted [them] to,” Stamkos said. “It’s crazy what a difference a year can make in terms of the expectations of our group with where we were last year.

“But, honestly, you’d drive yourself absolutely insane if you keep dwelling on that. … At this point, there’s no point in looking back. You have to look forward and figure it out.”