Evaluating five potential Steven Stamkos replacements for the Canadian Olympic Team

The Olympic men's ice hockey tournament at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games will not feature the most feared goal scorer in the NHL, as Lightning superstar Steven Stamkos has been ruled ineligible to participate by Lightning team doctors. 

Stamkos worked like crazy to heal his broken tibia in time to represent his country, and this is tough news for one of the league's most committed and likable players. It's also tough news for hockey fans: the tournament will be poorer for Stamkos' absence.

But with Stamkos unable to compete, Team Canada will need to replace him with one of several talented forwards excluded from the initial roster. Here's how five leading candidates stack up:

Qualitative

Discussing Team Canada's options on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, TSN reporter Darren Dreger suggested that the Team Canada brain trust would look for a 13th forward (translation: a player who won't grumble in a depth role), but one talented enough to play on the top line.

While Stamkos is a center in the NHL, he was always going to play on the wing for Team Canada at the Olympics. So hypothetically the club should be looking for a winger, rather than a "pure" center.

Also worth considering is that Stamkos' right-hand shot is probably the best power-play weapon Team Canada would've brought to Sochi. For our purposes we shouldn't weigh that too heavily - even though it has been suggested that Team Canada might - but Stamkos' primary utility (as a ridiculously talented goal scorer first and foremost) is something the team would do well to emphasize in naming his replacement. 

Reports suggest that Team Canada will name a replacement forward in short order, and Claude Giroux and Martin St. Louis are considered leading candidates. We'll also look at three other players Steve Yzerman and company should consider: Tyler Seguin, James Neal and Eric Staal.

Quantitative

Here's how the five candidates we're considering stack up by the counting stats this season:

Of the five, Seguin has produced even-strength goals at the highest rate. Neal, however, is the most potent overall goal scorer (largely thanks to his power-play production).

Here's another table that accounts for the last three seasons, and rates that production on a per-game basis:

Again, Neal has been far and away the most potent goal scorer overall. However, when you consider Seguin's age and the fact that he hasn't been playing on a loaded Penguins power-play for the past three years, his numbers stack up well.

It's also worth noting that Giroux is more of an elite playmaker than he is a pure sniper. While Stamkos is far from a slouch in the passing game, he wasn't slotted onto Canada's top-line for his slick saucer passes...

Finally here's a "Player Usage Chart" that visually graphs the way each player has been deployed by their respective teams this season. The x-axis (horizontal) gauges "zone-start percentage" or the proportion of times a player starts a shift in the offensive end of the rink, measured against the number of times a player starts 150 feet away from the opponent's net. The y-axis (vertical) represents the difficulty of competition faced by each player. 

The size of each player's "bubble" represents the amount of ice time per game averaged by that skater, and the shading reflects the extent to which they post a positive shot attempt differential relative to their team (the darker shade of blue a bubble is, the further above water each particular skater is by the "corsi-relative" metric):

Some takeaways: all five of these forwards are deployed in an offensive oriented fashion by their clubs, and all battle difficult competition. Staal's deployment is the biggest outlier of the five in terms of the offensive orientation apparent in his deployment; but he's still facing extremely stiff competition for the Hurricanes this season and no one should describe him as sheltered.

The big thing to notice is that St. Louis is facing the toughest competition of the five skaters, is playing the most minutes overall, and is starting the lowest proportion of his shifts in the offensive end. Do you think the general manager of his team has noticed?

Martin St. Louis

The plucky 38-year-old superstar is the emotional favorite to make the Canadian Olympic team, even among his fellow NHL players. 

St. Louis has veteran experience, in addition to a Stanley Cup ring and a Hart Trophy victory. He's also fifth among all NHL skaters in points over the past three seasons. 

In addition to his emotional appeal, St. Louis might also be the actual prohibitive favorite to replace his teammate on Team Canada. In fact, a Canadian team roster was posted on Wednesday morning that listed Stamkos as 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds (dimensions which mirror St. Louis' stature closely). Has the selection already been made?

Eric Staal

Staal won Olympic gold in 2010 and has more international experience than any of the five players listed here as "potential Stamkos replacements." Staal has 26 points in 32 games with the national team over his career.

Staal is one the most consistently excellent offensive players in the NHL and is 16th in points over the past five seasons (tied with John Tavares, and ahead of Evgeni Malkin - albeit in more games played). The knocks on Staal: he's a left-handed shooter and has scored goals at the lowest rate among the five candidates over the past three seasons...

Tyler Seguin

Seguin has been a revelation for the Dallas Stars, scoring at better than a point-per-game pace. At 22, Seguin is only just hitting his prime scoring years and already has 69 goals in his NHL career. In terms of raw offensive skill, the dynamism of Seguin's game is probably the closest Team Canada can get to replicating what Stamkos brings to the table. Seguin even has that powerful right-handed shot.

Working against Seguin: continued skepticism about his maturity level and two-way game, and a dearth of experience with Hockey Canada. Aside from participating in four Spengler Cup games during the 2012-13 NHL lockout, Seguin has never represented his country at a level above U-17.

James Neal

Neal doesn't have the right-handed shot that Stamkos does, but he's scored at a preposterous rate over the past three seasons. Neal is third in goals per game rate over the past three seasons. The two players ahead of him? Stamkos and Alexander Ovechkin. Pretty spectacular company.

Neal is a teammate of Canadian Olympic forwards Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz in Pittsburgh, so he also has the familiarity angle going for him (even if he spends much of his time at even-strength stapled to Evgeni Malkin). He previously won silver with Canada at the 2009 World Hockey Championships, and has eight points in nine games on international ice.

Claude Giroux

Giroux is probably the best player on this list. Only Crosby, Malkin and Stamkos have scored more points per game than Giroux has over the past three seasons, and the versatile forward can pretty much do everything on the ice. Giroux is a right-handed shooter, a fast skater, an excellent play-maker and can thrive playing a physical style if required.

After a cataclysmic start to the season, Giroux has been among the hottest players in the league over the past couple of months. He's a bona fide superstar in the prime of his career and has a relatively impressive track record of success at the international level (including a gold-medal victory with Canada's U20 team in 2008). 

theScore Pick:

You can't go too wrong choosing a "13th forward" from a group of five players as talented as Neal, St. Louis, Giroux, Staal and Seguin. 

In fact, there's arguments for and against all five players. Neal is the best overall goal scorer, St. Louis is the deserving and still elite elder statesman, Staal is the steady veteran, and Seguin is the most likely to provide a pale imitation of what Stamkos brings to the table.

But Giroux stands out from the crowd. He's the only player on this list who qualifies as a legitimate superstar in the prime of his career. The Flyers captain is simply the greatest player on this list of great players and there's no need to overthink it any further.