An early Christmas gift

First off, before this post, I would like to say that YES, I have had an extended absence from the blog. I want to apologize to all the Twentyteners out there who have missed my musings, and can only hope you'll forgive me as I've been bogged down with work (I built the application, I haven't been sitting around building cartoons, FYI), Christmas shopping, and of course crying over the Blue Jays loss of Roy Halladay. I don't hate the trade, but that's for another blog for another day. I can only hope that in this, the most festive of seasons that you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Onto my post. The early gift is NOT my post, that'd be somewhat lame, but my gift does come in the form of a post, which is quite different, let me assure you.

I would like to give an early Christmas gift as an endorsement of a certain player to make the squad. Stevie, I hope you're reading, because this is for you.

There's a certain player, one who wasn't even invited to the camp in the summer. This player was one of the best players at the end of the last season, and thus far this season has been one of the top players in the league. He has international experience, experience in which he's excelled in. His success this season is no secret, and his name HAS been tossed around, just not on this blog, which, of course, is the be all end all of what's what with the 2010 Canadian Olympic hockey team.

Who is this mystery player you might ask?

Steven Stamkos.

That's right, the young Stamkos has been absolutely on fire this season. With 21 goals and 14 assists (at the time of writing this post). He is 2nd on the Lightning in scoring (ugh, Martin St. Louis has 40). After a rough start to his rookie season, Stamkos has really adapted well to the NHL level of play quite nicely.

I had a loyal Twentytener just tonight tell me, "you don't need Stamkos there if you have Toews", but I could not disagree more. Toews is a great player, don't get me wrong. But there are a couple of guys in August that we were saying were on this team. Not so much as "locks" but guys expected to be there. The problem, of course, is that some of these guys seemed to have lost their scoring touch. Guys like Eric Staal and Jeff Carter aren't really lighting the lamp, with 6 and 12 goals respectively. Stamkos has more then the two of them combined, and as much as I hate to say it, with Marty St. Louis passing the puck as well as he is to Stamkos in Tampa, it might not be a bad idea to pair the two of them up, much like the San Jose connection of Heatley-Marleau-Thornton is expected to play together come February.

So there you go Steve Stamkos, you have a ringing endorsement from the best Canadian Olympic hockey based blog on the interweb, hopefully Stevie Claus, also known as Stevie Y, puts you on his special list...

I'm back baby...

WHAMMO!!