Stamkos wore a regular jersey and skated with a handful of Lightning players during the optional practice before the team boarded a flight Wednesday afternoon for Boston. Stamkos said he felt "okay" after the skate and will see how the injury responds to the workout before deciding whether to play in the Bolts' pivotal Atlantic Division showdown in Boston Thursday.
"We'll see how it feels the rest of today and tomorrow," Stamkos said following Wednesday's training session. "It was just something that was nagging a little bit, so thought we'd give it a couple days to see if it would settle down. It definitely felt better than it did the last time I was on the ice."
The tricky part for Stamkos is balancing wanting to play and help the team win the division and secure the top spot in the Eastern Conference with making sure he's 100 percent once the playoffs start. The Lightning captain sat out the Arizona game on Monday and was held out of Tuesday's practice for body maintenance.
"It's probably one of those things where if you just took two weeks doing nothing, it'd probably be good," said Stamkos, who paces the Lightning and ranks tied for fifth in the NHL with a career-high 59 assists this season. "But you don't really want to do that right now heading into the stretch run here where we're fighting for a division. It's obviously nothing major, but it's something that has just been nagging. I don't want it to be nagging. We'll just play it day by day now. It's gotten better the last couple days with just getting treatment and doing some things away from the ice. We'll see how it feels today and tomorrow morning."
Boston gained a point in the standings following a 5-4 shootout loss in Winnipeg Tuesday night. The Bruins trail the Lightning by just one point now in the race for the Atlantic crown and own a game in hand on the Bolts.
The Lightning have led the Atlantic for the majority of the season, but a loss to the Bruins on Thursday would drop them out of the top spot for the first time since October 18.
Tampa Bay and Boston will play twice in the next six days, the outcome of those two games likely deciding which team wins the division and which team earns home ice throughout the Eastern Conference playoffs.
"These games against Boston, the last couple ones, those are going to be playoff atmosphere games," Stamkos said. "It'll be a good indication of where we're at. We want to improve on the last time we played them, not give them a couple power-play goals. We'll look to just have that competitiveness tomorrow and that fire in our game that'll lead to emotion and a good game hopefully."
