It wasn’t a signature blast from the circle on the power play. Nor was it an empty net goal. In the end, goal number 500 for Steven Stamkos was just slightly above a tap-in. Four minutes into the game, with two of his longest tenured teammates (Alex Killorn and Victor Hedman) Stamkos made history.
Most of the work was done by the only player on the team that has been in the Tampa Bay Lightning organization longer than Stamkos, Killorn. The Harvard Man, drafted a year before Stamkos, made a nice toe-drag to get around the defense and fed the puck over to Stamkos who, with that sense that the best goalscorers have, had moved to the front of the net.