Tampa Bay Lightning captain Steven Stamkos underwent surgery this week to repair a left-sided lower abdominal core muscle injury, The Athletic reported on Saturday.
According to The Athletic, the team expects Stamkos will make a full recovery before the start of the 2020-21 season.
The Lightning won the franchise's second Stanley Cup last month, but largely did it without Stamkos. The 30-year-old missed the entire postseason while being deemed "unfit to play," except for one brief appearance in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Stamkos received five shifts, totaling 2:47, and scored a goal on the first shot he took. He became the first player in 80 years to score while playing his first postseason game of the year in the Stanley Cup Final.
However Stamkos said he experienced "an issue" in the first period, and sat on the bench for the remainder of the game. Stamkos did not dress for the rest of the series.
"His progress had hit a snag [during] early rounds," coach Jon Cooper revealed to the ESPN on Ice podcast last week. "So he took a lot of time off the ice and then slowly tried to rebuild himself, and the progress was excellent. When he was going to play [Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final] and we made that decision, everyone was involved in it. ... Those first shifts go on ,and we never expected he would tweak something again. It was unfortunate that it happened, but in the storybook fashion of things, it was so cool the way it ended up."
Stamkos underwent core muscle surgery March 2, which had an initial recovery timeline of six to eight weeks. He rejoined his teammates for voluntary training sessions in July, but then suffered several setbacks that have kept him out of the lineup.
"He did a tremendous job rehabbing during the pause and getting himself ready," GM Julien BriseBois said earlier this month. "As it happens sometimes with injuries, and particularly with this injury, sometimes your body compensates. It eventually triggered what we believe is a compensation injury that has developed into -- or turned out to be -- related to this injury."
BriseBois said that playing in secure bubbles limited the team's option to get further evaluation on Stamkos' injury.
"You couldn't send him anywhere to see specialists," BriseBois said. "If you send him out of the bubble, he has to quarantine again. What's the tradeoff? He wants to be around the team. We want him around the team. It really complicated matters."
Stamkos has spent his career in Tampa Bay after being selected No. 1 overall in 2008. He was named Lightning captain in 2014. Since then, no team in the NHL has more postseason wins than the Lightning (54).
He was the second-leading scorer on the Lightning in 2019-20 with 29 goals and 37 assists in 57 games. He's sixth among active players with 422 goals. Stamkos is under contract through 2023-24.