Steven Stamkos’ evolution from a pure shooter to a playmaker

Last season, Tampa Bay Lightning captain Steven Stamkos seemed to make a change to his game. He came into the league as a goal scoring prodigy. Drafted first overall in 2008, he proceeded to score 23, 51, 45 and 60 goals in his first four seasons. That start to his career had many thinking he might be one of the best goal scorers of this generation. But since then, he’s only topped 40 goals once and last season, he had more than twice as many assists as goals.

The change in Stamkos’s scoring was abrupt. He’d never had more assists than goals in a season. To go from that to over double was quite a shift. Until last season, he wore the label of a pure sniper, both for good and for bad. For…