Steven Stamkos reveals why he left Lighting for Predators

It's been a rollercoaster of emotions. There's so much amazing history in Tampa for my family and I, and we tried to work something out there, but we fell short.

You always think something is gonna work out, but this morning when I woke up, we knew we were gonna make a decision to be somewhere else.

Every time we were looking for things that would interest us in a new team, Nashville kept popping up. I'm thankful they had mutual interest, and we were able to get something done.

As crazy as it's been, once we made that call to Barry Trotz and the Predators, that uneasy feeling went away, and it's just been pure excitement.

Just to have a team show as much interest as Nashville did, from their ownership, to the GM, to their coach, to some of the players on the team that I'm familiar with, it just made us feel really special and good and made that decision that much easier.