TAMPA, Fla. — Sitting in the shadow of Amalie Arena, all Chyna Yelding could do was sob big tears.
“I’ve been coming here since I was a little girl,” she said through the tears.
She made the trip there Monday afternoon to soak in a reality that she still can’t accept.
“It’s a big thing. It is,” she said. “It’s like losing your dad a little bit.”
Steven Stamkos is no longer a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning after signing a four-year deal with the Nashville Predators.
Stamkos and the team could not come to terms on a new contract.
“I had to come down here immediately and look at the poster of him and just make sure it wasn’t gone,” Yelding said. “And I feel like I need to come down here every day and see it because I just don’t — I don’t want to believe that it’s true.”
To Yelding, Tampa Bay didn’t just lose a future Hall of Fame hockey player but also a piece of its own identity. And Lisa Suprenand feels the same way.
“I mean, I feel like Steven is Tampa Bay,” Suprenand said.
Suprenand is the CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Tampa Bay, a nonprofit that helps families while their children are experiencing medical crises.
According to Suprenand, Stamkos made her nonprofit his cause. Stamkos and his wife personally supported Ronald McDonald House Charities through ad campaigns and fundraisers, as well as by inviting many of the families to Bolts games.
“To know that he and Sandra and their family cared about them and what they were experiencing was just so powerful,” Suprenand said. “We will miss him greatly here in Tampa Bay.”
With Stamkos en route to Nashville, the Tampa Bay nonprofit now worries about losing some steam.
“Maybe someone else will step up to the charge and be passionate about children and families going through a medical crisis.”
Yelding, meanwhile, still can’t say how she will ever move on from a player who will forever be in her heart.
“I want Steven to know how loved he is and how much he means to all of us,” she said. “He is Tampa. I don’t know how else to say it, really, but he is us.”
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