Martin St. Louis will live the Olympic dream his teammate cannot.
The Tampa Bay Lightning forward will join Canada in Sochi, replacing the injured Steven Stamkos.
“If anyone could replace him, I know he would want me,” St. Louis said during a press conference in Tampa Thursday morning. “For a lot of us that play the game, going on the ice is the best therapy.”
Stamkos addressed the media Thursday and threw his full support behind St. Louis.
“I don’t see this as Marty replacing me. I see this as Marty deserving to go,” Stamkos said. “He’s going to go over there and prove to everyone why he deserves a spot on that team.
“I would’ve loved to go over there together, but one way or another, it was only going to be one of us.”
St. Louis, the 2012-13 NHL scoring leader, was left off Canada’s initial roster by the national team’s selection committee, headed by Steve Yzerman, who is also the general manager of the Lightning.
“There’s not much else he could’ve done to deserve a spot on that team. We can’t do anything about it now,” Stamkos told sportsnet.ca last month. “You never want to see a teammate or, for me, one of my best friends — a guy who’s really been a mentor to me — disappointed and down like that. It’s tough. I wish he was on the team.”
The decision to leave St. Louis off the initial roster was seen as a difficult one for Yzerman, yet the winger has responded with eight goals and eight assists in 14 games played since the Jan. 7 roster announcement.
“Marty’s such a true professional, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting his play. He’s a huge part of our team in Tampa and a guy I really look up to, so it was definitely tough to see him go through that,” Stamkos said recently.
“I heard from Stammer that he wasn’t going to go, so I knew it was a possibility,” St. Louis told reporters in Tampa on Thursday. “So I guess I was prepared for it.”
The Laval, Que., native said he felt bad for Stamkos, who tried hard to come back from a broken right tibia he suffered in a Nov. 11 NHL game before being ruled out of Olympic competition by the Lightning’s medical staff on Wednesday.
“We’ve got to understand how hard he’s tried and worked to put himself in the position he’s in and give himself a chance,” St. Louis said. “Obviously he’s disappointed, and I’m disappointed for him. Stammer’s a true professional and he’s done everything he can this past month to get back to the lightning first and hopefully to Team Canada.”
St. Louis was considered one of Canada’s most surprising snubs when Canada’s team was first announced, along with Philadelphia forward Claude Giroux and Pittsburgh forward James Neal.
The veteran has won two world championship silver medals for Canada over his career. He played in the 2006 Turin Olympics, scoring two goals and an assist in Canada’s disappointing seventh-place finish.
This past summer, St. Louis told Sportsnet he was motivated to make the 2014 Olympic team, especially since he was left off Canada’s gold medal-winning 2010 roster.
“It was tough. It was one of those disappointments,” St. Louis said, “you feed off it and get better. Keep pushing.”
Since 2010, St. Louis has won three Lady Byng awards as the league’s most gentlemanly player, and has been named to the league second-team all-star squad thrice.
The 38-year-old St. Louis has 54 points in 56 games played this season, leading the Lightning to a 32-19-5 record and second place in the Atlantic Division.
Stamkos said Thursday he might take a couple days off but will continue to work diligently on his rehab in effort to return for the Lightning’s playoff push after the Olympic break. He will likely watch some Olympic games between workouts and root on Team Canada and St. Louis.
“The character that he has, the way he’s played in big-game situations in the past. I mean, he’s won individual awards, he’s won the team championships, he’s been in those situations,” Stmakos said of St. Louis. “It’s not like it’s a young guy that’s never been in these situations before filling in for someone. This is a guy who can step in and play any role asked.”
(with files from CP)
