Steven Stamkos reveals reason for joining Predators and leaving Lightning

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

Not by my trying, that's for sure. Once it became clear that staying in Tampa Bay wasn't an option, he and his family began considering other opportunities. Once we got past that, we were really open to the opportunity of going somewhere else.

Every time we looked 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.

Depends who you ask. If you ask Tampa, maybe the door was closed a little sooner than if you ask me. 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.

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 easie.