As much as he wants to come back and is trying to, he said: "It's sometimes tempering those expectations because of the severity of what we're dealing with here."
Stamkos went to the team dinner before the playoffs, and he was around the dressing room for games and practices in the first round. But when the Lightning have worked on technical things, he has kept his distance.
"I don't want to be in the way of that," he said. "They have to go out there and focus. The last thing they need is a distraction. I've tried to walk that line."
It's sad to hear Stamkos calling himself a "distraction," but maybe not as sad as this:
"I thought I was playing my best hockey down the stretch," he said. "I was excited about this playoff run and what we could do with ultimately pretty much the same team as last year. We've seen what they could do in Round 1, and I've been just as excited as ever to be a part of that and go through it with them. But there's nothing like playing in these situations. This is what you work hard for all summer, all year, and that's what was really disappointing for me when I got that news."
Did you catch that? He called the Lightning "they" in the same sentence in which he said he was excited to be a part of this. That's not a Freudian slip regarding free agency. That's a captain who can't lead his team on the ice, an athlete who can't compete for the championship to which he had dedicated so much of his life, even though he feels like he could.
"As a hockey player," Stamkos said, "I just want to go out there and play."