Quoting: BOLTLOVER1
Absolutely serious .. Cooper and Stamkos both go if no Cup .. Stamkos game other than a 1 timer is pedestrian... to keep both is just insanity .. and we all know definitiom of insanity ..
Cooper should be done if we lose this year, but Stamkos has proven himself to be a star player. He scored 40g last year and leads the team in points right now, with over a point per game. His playoff performance is comparatively disappointing, but a good coach (if not Cooper, his successor) would be carefully reviewing with him why that may be and how to change that. There's no real reason Stamkos can't dominate the playoffs like he does the regular season given the right mentality and coaching assistance. Either way, though, you act as if playoffs are a guaranteed thing. Last time we lost Stamkos for most of the season to injury, even though we were initial Cup favorites, Kucherov had his breakout season and scored 40g, Hedman set career highs, Vasilevskiy and Bishop were the best goaltending duo there was, and we had young talent like Point entering the team, it wasn't enough to earn a playoff spot. If you get rid of all of our depth players and exchange them for prospects, and move Stamkos, there's no reason to think we'd be better than we were in 2016-17; in fact, a lot of these players, based on training camp, haven't looked quite ready for NHL action and aren't necessarily an improvement over our wingers who have proven that they can, at the very least, fulfill the role of supporting players.
Also, from a management perspective, star players like Stamkos provide good marketing opportunities that generate revenue. Stamkos has, for right or for wrong, essentially become the face of the franchise, and moving him would hurt our team revenue. That (along with the NMC) makes him extremely valuable to management regardless of how he plays.