Three is Not a Lucky Number for the Lightning
In a Remembrance Day matinée against the Boston Bruins, the Tampa Bay Lightning not only lost by three, but lost three players in the process, including number three himself, Keith Aulie.
The first to go however, was alternate captain, Steven Stamkos in a bone-breaking collision with his home net. He got tied up with B’s defenseman Dougie Hamilton and viewers watching at home on their TVs could see the force with which Stamkos was sent careening into the net. Stamkos wasn’t going down without a fight, and put weight on the leg not once, but twice as goalie, Anders Lindback, called for trainers to come to his teammate’s aid.
In the video Sami Salo is kneeling on the ice beside his injured teammate, and the camera zooms in on Keith Aulie several times, little did anyone know that before the end of the game these two players would suffer a fate like Stamkos. Salo left late in the second, favouring his right leg, and the next period saw Aulie leaving with an upper-body injury.
Stamkos was taken to a hospital in Boston for X-rays where it was discovered that he had a broken tibia, which will require surgery. General Manager, Steve Yzerman, states that he will be out indefinitely, leaving Lightning fans to question whether the fate of their team until the star, who’s tied for the NHL lead in goals with Alex Steen and Sidney Crosby, is able to return.
Not only are Lightning fans holding their breath about Stamkos, but Canada is as well. With the Olympics coming up soon, Stamkos is expected to play a huge role in the country’s march for the gold.
“I’m physically sick,” Ken Hitchcock, who will be an assistant captain in Sochi, told NHL.com after seeing Stamkos go down. At that point word of the broken tibia hadn’t come down. “We’re all holding our breath. We don’t know. We haven’t heard anything so we’re all holding our breath. He’s one of the most dynamic players in the world and you want to see him play all the time, even if you have to play against him.”
Here is video of the Stamkos injury.
