First Lawton suggested the fact that a deal isn’t done already is an indicator that Stamkos’ future isn’t in Tampa Bay:
We don’t know what’s going on in Steven’s head, but I can tell you – as a General Manager obviously, when Stammer started his career – we used to talk about it back then. Whatever we do with this guy, we can never let him get to unrestricted free agency, or even close, because we’ll never be able to defend what some of the bigger markets can do. To be fair, for the Lightning, a lot of that has changed as far as from the ownership’s perspective.