Stamkos and Downie have an ongoing video game and ping-pong rivalry. (AJMESSIER.COM)

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This article from the THN Archive was written by Ken Campbell.

One of them has those perpetually rosy cheeks that make it look as though he has just come in from playing two hours of pond hockey. The other, while he cleans up quite nicely, has a mug shot in this year’s NHL Guide and Record Book that looks something like a cross between Charles Manson and Denis Lemieux.

One of them has a single career fight – and that was against Nikolai Zherdev, so does it even really count? The other has been suspended more times than Bart Simpson for miscreant behavior ranging from cross-checking a teammate in the teeth during practice to whacking a linesman across the shins with his stick.

One of them credits his father for almost all of his success. The other not only lost his father when he was eight years old, but watched him die while rescue workers tried frantically to free him from the family truck after an accident on an icy road 14 years ago.

Yet Steven Stamkos and Steve Downie find themselves in essentially the same place these days, figuratively and literally.

They live about a two-minute walk from each other in Tampa and in the past couple of months, they’ve become inseparable friends. Stamkos regularly takes Downie to the cleaners when they play golf, while Downie puts Stamkos in his place in NHL 10 and ping-pong. They even have each other over for eat-in dinners of steak and potatoes on occasion.

Lightning Legend Returns For First Time As Opponent For the first time in his career, Steven Stamkos will be an opponent against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

“You were kind of scared of him,” Stamkos said of his BFF before he got to know Downie. “He had that chip on his shoulder that nobody really wanted to see. You meet the guy and you think he’s crazy, but actually he’s a really great guy. He’ll do anything for people he cares about and I’m proud to have him on my team and I’m proud to be his friend.”

Don’t let the rosy cheeks fool you; Stamkos is mature far beyond his 20 years, in part because he learned some very important life lessons watching long stretches of games from the bench last season.

It’s a level of self-realization for Downie that required a couple more years and some painful lessons to discover, but it looks as though he has found it and used it to tame the beast within. And the result is an on-ice chemistry the Tampa Bay Lightning could have never predicted, but one that has produced the first glimmer of hope for a once-proud franchise that came perilously close to being mismanaged into the ground.

Yes, times certainly look more promising in Tampa these days. The organization went from some of the most incompetent ownership in league history – and that’s saying something – to a billionaire from Boston who is in the process of retiring in the Tampa area. And for the first time in years, the hopeful eyes of Lightning fans are looking to Stamkos as the face and Downie as the scowl of the franchise. In fact, after a recent morning skate in Toronto, Downie explained the nicks and cuts of the hockey season by saying, “I just lost a fight with a pellet gun.”

Steven Stamkos Gets Incredible Tribute From Lightning Steven Stamkos was welcomed back in a big way by the Lightning.

Since the all-star break last season, only Alex Ovechkin has scored more goals than the 58 Stamkos had scored through mid-March. With 42 goals in 66 games, Stamkos stood to become the NHL’s third-youngest 50-goal scorer after Wayne Gretzky and Jimmy Carson and he was the youngest player in league history to have an 18-game point streak. Since joining a line with Downie on the right side and Martin St-Louis on the left, Stamkos has emerged as one of the NHL’s most lethally offensive players.

“To tell you the truth,” said Lightning coach Rick Tocchet, “I don’t know where we would be without Steven Stamkos.”

St-Louis is the common thread in the success of both players this season. It was his decision to play left wing for the first time in his career that allowed the Lightning to give Downie top-six minutes and, by extension, the room for Stamkos to get to the scoring areas to unleash his shot. For his own part, Downie was on pace for 20 goals and 200-plus penalty minutes, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since Theo Fleury did it in 2001-02.

What the two also have in common is they have willed themselves to become impact players after sputtering early in their careers. Stamkos, at 18, endured the half-season from hell last year under coach Barry Melrose and Downie was forging a reputation as a fourthline goon with a penchant for combustible outbursts before following Lightning strength and conditioning coach Chuck Lobe to Minnesota for a summer of intense conditioning.

Stamkos, meanwhile, spent six days a week last summer in the torture chamber known as former NHL workout fiend Gary Roberts’ home gym.

“The one commonality for both these kids is they did all the work themselves,” said Lightning GM Brian Lawton, “and they deserve all the credit.” eryone from Joe Sakic and Steve Yzerman to Brett Hull.

And if Downie manages to stay on the right path, he could become Bob Probert-scary on the ice. In fact, now that he has reined in his anger, Downie is even more of a threat because opponents have no idea whether he’ll explode or not. Lightning assistant Adam Oates compares Downie to Tocchet.

“I played with Rick Tocchet,” Oates said. “And sometimes I was scared sitting beside him on our bench because he was ready to rip someone’s head off.”

To be sure, Tocchet sees a little of himself in Downie, a player who has been suspended for 20 games by both the NHL and the American League prior to this season. It’s no coincidence Downie’s emergence as a player has occurred in tandem with him finding a new level of maturity.

“You’re talking about a kid who, when he was in the minors last year, would eat a pizza five minutes before the game,” Tocchet said. “I hate to say it, but it was stupid. He wasn’t smart in certain aspects of his off-ice (behavior).”

But gobbling down a pizza before puck drop was pretty far down on the list of concerns about Downie last season. After all, he averaged just over one point and just under a mind-boggling five PIMs per game in the AHL. But it was his penchant for losing all sense of control on the ice that had everyone worried. First there was the five-game suspension and anger management counseling for his part in a hazing and an on-ice attack on teammate Akim Aliu in junior hockey, followed by a 20-game ban for launching himself at Dean McAmmond in a pre-season game, followed by another 20-game sentence for whacking a linesman with his stick on a faceoff after a goal in the AHL.

Downie is not about to get nominated for the Lady Byng, but he has realized he can be something more than a fourth-line energy player/goon. Lawton said he has received several warning calls from the league this season regarding Downie and his new on-ice persona is still clearly a work in progress. People tend to keep their heads up when Downie is on the ice and Tocchet thinks Downie is one of the few players who intimidates Alex Ovechkin a little bit.

“I’ve seen (Ovechkin) look around a couple of times when Downs is on the ice and I love that,” Tocchet said. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t a few times have to grab him on the bench and settle him down, because there is a switch there that, in the past, it turns and he’s done for the game. There have been a lot of games this year where I’ve had to grab him and turn that switch off.”

For Stamkos, it was more a matter of turning a switch on. After being humiliated by Melrose, Stamkos was sat out for a three-game stretch by Tocchet last season and sent to the press box with a notebook and instructions to make notes on where the center was in defensive zone situations. Right around the same time, he decided to spend more time in the weight room with Roberts, working his core muscles over the summer. Stamkos is now almost impossible to knock off the puck.

“I’m just happy I didn’t give him my hands,” Roberts chuckled.

But there is no denying the first half of his rookie season was terribly hard. Handpicked by co-owner and all-round disaster Len Barrie, Melrose hadn’t coached a game in the NHL in 13 years and evidently didn’t receive the memo that more and more 18-year-olds were entering the league ready to play than ever before. Melrose benched Stamkos often and restricted his ice time to the point where Stamkos wondered whether it wouldn’t be best for him to go back to junior hockey.

(As an aside, because of Melrose’s insistence on not playing Stamkos, he reached only one of his achievable bonuses last season and made just $1.3 million. This season he has hit them all and will take home $3.725 million in earnings.)

When asked what the most demoralizing thing was that Melrose ever said to him, Stamkos responded, “To tell you the truth, I didn’t talk to him much. I don’t remember a single conversation we ever had.”

Now, to nail an 18-year-old No. 1 overall pick’s pants to the bench is one thing, but to not communicate to him the reasons why you’re doing it? It’s little wonder the Melrose experiment was ended before the calendar hit December. One of Melrose’s parting shots was that he didn’t think Stamkos was ready.

“Looking back on it now, I learned from it, but at the time you’re pissed,” Stamkos said. “You begin to really doubt yourself but you’re 18 years old and you’re playing in the best league in the world and sometimes you have to take a step back and realize that.”

Lawton, who was a first-overall pick himself in 1983, said he only saw one occasion when Stamkos looked truly flummoxed over the situation and it was the only time he realized Stamkos was a normal 18-year-old.

“People should forever know that under difficult circumstances with a lot of pressure, he was A-plus as a human being,” Lawton said. “Everybody was telling him he couldn’t do it and why, right down to his coach, but Steven Stamkos did not believe the masses. That’s a big test in life. I’ve been through that test and I can tell you I didn’t pass that test until years later.”

Lawton dealt for Downie in November of 2008 and three months later, on Stamkos’ 19th birthday, made the trade that paved the way for Stamkos to break through. He dealt Jussi Jokinen to the Carolina Hurricanes and while the return was rather underwhelming, it opened up a spot at center and on the power play; Stamkos seized it in an enormous way.

“(Stamkos) wasn’t playing much, but he never made himself out to be the victim,” St-Louis said. “And once he saw his little window of opportunity, he jumped feet first.”

Steven Stamkos and Downie have become fast friends and it shows on the ice. (AJMESSIER.COM)

Tocchet likes to refer to Stamkos’ release as a “sling shot.” It is undoubtedly already right there with the likes of Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk and Jeff Carter. A right shot, Stamkos usually takes the pass on his forehand from St-Louis in the high slot and quickly, but lovingly, cradles it for a split-second before sending it to the top of the net. Of his first 42 goals this season, more than half (23) had come on either wrist or snap shots, while 12 came from slapshots, four from tip-ins, two from backhanders and one on a wraparound.

To be sure, Stamkos’ ability to find a spot on the ice and behind the goalie make him a special talent. Playing with St-Louis in the World Championship last spring, Stamkos tied for the tournament lead in goals with seven in nine games.

“His positional play right now is at the level of Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic,” Tocchet said. “He knows what angle to receive the puck and what position to be in to shoot. Brett Hull knew where to be to score and he’s got all those elements. And he’s got it all at…he’s what, 20 years old?”

Downie will be 23 in April, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that much adversity has been crammed into such little time. He was one month away from his ninth birthday the morning of March 2, 1996. Downie and his father, John, got into the family’s Ford Explorer at about 6 a.m. to go to a hockey practice, but had to pick up another player along the way and took a different route to the rink. John tried to pass another vehicle, but hit a patch of black ice before running into a ditch and hitting two trees and a telephone pole. The pole struck John Downie on top of his head and he died 20 minutes later while rescuers tried to get him out of the vehicle. Steve Downie, with a few cuts and bruises, watched the entire tragedy unfold in front of his eyes.

Then, around the time he was hitting puberty, Downie began to lose his hearing and was diagnosed with otosclerosis, a hardening of the bones around the eardrums in both ears. The last time he had his hearing checked, he had 75 percent hearing in his left ear and just 16 percent in his right.

“It’s not getting any worse,” he said, “so that’s a good thing.”

If you wonder why Downie played a little angry, that might give you a couple of good reasons. But Downie isn’t sure the tragedy he endured as a young child has anything to do with how things turned out for him. He has no point of reference. He doesn’t know what it would have been like to grow up with a father.

“I can’t say that it has and I can’t say that it hasn’t,” Downie said, when asked whether the tragedy shaped him into the person he is now. “I don’t know what I would be like if that hadn’t happened to me. I don’t know what kind of player I would be and I don’t know what kind of person I would be. I might have had some anger about it when I was younger, but I’m not angry about it anymore. It’s something that happened to my family and we dealt with it. My mom raised two boys by herself and she did a great job.”

When asked whether he thinks his father would be proud of him, Downie said, “Absolutely. I think he’d be proud of my whole family. Not just me, but my brother and my mom. He’d be proud of us all.”

Oates says that if Stamkos stays healthy, “he’ll be a superstar.” He also said that how good Stamkos becomes is up to him. And it’s clear Stamkos has come to the conclusion he wants to be a great player. He’ll go back to Roberts this summer to try to get stronger and faster and might even be joined by his wingman Downie. The Bolts were making themselves a long shot to make the playoffs this season, but a Stamkos-Downie combination, should the Lightning be able to keep the dynamic duo together long term, would go a long way toward changing that.

From The THN Archive: Beauty and The Beast