Johnston: Inside the Lightning-Stamkos split — a reminder that in the NHL, business is more important than brotherhood

At the crossroads of brotherly love and hard-nosed business, the Tampa Bay Lightning were forced this week to part ways with one of the NHL’s tightest, most successful and longest-running duos.

Victor Hedman clearly didn’t fully realize that Steven Stamkos, who signed a four-year, $32 million contract extension with the Lightning on Tuesday, had become a free agent.

You’ve never seen a man so dejected after landing a big contract that runs into his late 30s. Hedman couldn’t even bring himself to laugh.

“It’s obviously very sad to see your friend leave and go play somewhere else,” he said from his home in Sweden during the off-season.

They have played together since 2009, each appearing in over 1,200 games for the Lightning, and have twice spearheaded the team’s Stanley Cup run after reaching the pinnacle of the sport.

Stamkos and Hedman pushed each other through tough workouts and took their competitive natures to the golf course when downtime allowed. They grew up together, attended each other’s weddings, raised families and never dreamed of a day when Stamkos would sign with the Nashville Predators while Hedman got a contract with identical terms from the Lightning.

“It’s going to be hard to imagine going into our locker room and going into Amalie Arena and not seeing him on the ice,” Hedman said. “It’s going to be super, super weird.”

To be honest, there had been a strange relationship between Stamkos and Lightning management for some time.

That explains why we reached a breaking point.

Stamkos still can’t quite understand why general manager Julien BriseBois let the entire summer pass without even discussing a possible extension. It was a frustration the Lightning captain publicly expressed on the opening day of training camp in September.

Looking back on signing his own four-year, $32 million contract with the Predators on Monday, Stamkos saw it as the beginning of the end.

Or, as he himself put it: “The beginning of the writing on the wall.”

Still, the sides engaged in a series of negotiations this offseason that lasted into last week, exploring various contract ranges and options before ultimately settling on a long-term deal that would keep the AAV as low as possible and preserve the club’s ability to navigate the salary cap.

BriseBois is a decisive thinker who is not afraid to make unpopular or unorthodox decisions, many of which have helped create the Cup-winning teams of 2020 and 2021.

While he fully understands who Stamkos is and how much he means to Tampa — “I will say he’s arguably the best spokesperson in the league for an organization,” BriseBois said. “He’s incredibly articulate, authentic, honest, thoughtful, insightful” — the GM approached the contract talks with a specific vision of how the next Stamkos deal would fit into the Lightning’s overall picture and hasn’t wavered from it.

“Ultimately, there were scenarios and different structures and ways to put together a contract that, in my opinion, were in the best interest of the organization,” BriseBois said. “There were several that could have worked. Steven had several contracts that could have worked for him, but ultimately there was no overlap and that’s why we didn’t do a deal.”

The Lightning’s best offer for an eight-year term was somewhere in the neighborhood of an average annual value of $3 million — significantly less than Stamkos received for his four-year contract from Nashville.

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It’s not entirely fair to compare apples with apples.

Stamkos said what he would have accepted to stay in Tampa and what he pursued on the open market were two different things.

“When you’re in one place for a long time, you’re always trying to make it work and stay there, and there’s compromises on both sides,” he said. “So that was a completely different situation than a free agent on the open market and teams really trying to show you how important you would be if you were brought into their organization.”

Stamkos was willing to take a cut for his hometown team, but as the July 1 free agency window approached, he felt he was being asked to give back more than he was getting.

“That’s the hardest part, trying to hold on to something that might not be trying to hold on to you at all,” he lamented.

Contrast that with the way the organization handled Hedman’s situation, signing him to a new deal a year before the unrestricted free agent market. The Lightning did the same with the big defenseman in 2016 after initially letting Stamkos in within two days of becoming a UFA, and the organization even took a different approach with their second NHL contracts before that.

Under former GM Steve Yzerman, Stamkos’ contract as a starter expired in 2011 despite having scored 50 goals in his season. Hedman signed a seven-month extension.

It’s more a matter of philosophy than personalities: The Lightning are gambling that a 7-foot-1 defenseman who skates like the wind and has played 20-plus minutes per game for 15 straight seasons will be harder to replace than a leading scorer who just hit 40 goals and, at 33, must continue to perform offensively to be effective.

BriseBois explained that Hedman’s situation is the exception rather than the rule. He noted that most top NHL stars in recent years have had to wait for their fourth contract rather than sign an early extension. He cited Patrice Bergeron, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Joe Pavelski and Claude Giroux as examples.

What’s more, Tampa Bay believes it has already found a replacement for Stamkos, signing Jake Guentzel to a seven-year, $63 million contract on Monday. He’s five years younger than the departed captain and a noted scorer who BriseBois said will fit perfectly into the team’s culture.

“He’s a Bolt who just happened not to play for the Bolts in the past,” BriseBois said. “Today we’ve rectified that a little bit.”

Julien Brisebois stepped up quickly to replace Steven Stamkos’ attack when an acquisition became unstoppable. (Ron Chenoy / USA Today)

Although Stamkos and Lightning’s executives didn’t envision this happening, they remained respectful as they described the circumstances that led to the split.

BriseBois praised Stamkos as a future Hall of Famer and wished his family well. Stamkos expressed gratitude for how “first-class” the organization and the city have been to him.

“The memories I had in Tampa will outweigh any ill will or feelings I had during this process,” Stamkos said. “Those are temporary. Those are emotional decisions, and you know as time goes on, they usually go away.”

What will remain intact is his bond with Hedman, even if only one of them gets the chance to spend his entire career with the Lightning.

“Before we were teammates, we were good friends, and we always will be,” Hedman said. “Ideally, we would have liked to end our careers in Tampa and together. But at the end of the day, this hockey is a business.”

(Top photo of Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)