There is a sad, sad story currently taking place in the NHL. There are several layers to this tale of woe, but there is also a chance that this story can have a happy ending. I may or may not be adding some drama, but the NHL is currently holding Steven Stamkos hostage in Tampa, Florida.

Ok, so there may not be felonies occurring in Tampa Bay and Stamkos is not being held against his will. In fact he is being paid quite handsomely by the Lightning to the tune of $7.5 million per season. While Stamkos will eventually earn more money than he or any of his (future) children can possibly ever spend, he may do so in relative obscurity in the Sunshine State.

If you are an NHL fan you have of course heard of the Tampa Bay superstar center. He continues to score goals at breakneck speed and dazzle the Florida locals 41 nights a year with talents they have never seen. But for the rest of North America those 41 road games aren’t enough. The electrifying sniper with the lazer beam shot brings his talents on a cross-country tour to remind us that he absolutely needs to be wearing the sweater of a team in a market that deserves him.

I’m not going to preach about the Original Six and the pious mountaintop on which the hockey “royalty” reside. I understand that expansion is a part of all professional sports. But I also believe that contraction is an essential part of sports in order to preserve the integrity of the brand. If you happen to be a fan of Dallas, Florida, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Phoenix or Nashville, this would be a good time to stop reading. Each of your beautiful cities are perfect for so many things, hockey is not one of them.

Hockey has been and always will be a sport of geographic segregation. While segregation might be a term that is taboo in almost every other walk of life, it applies to the NHL on the planet earth. Will there be exhibition games in Mexico? No. Why not? Because no one cares about hockey in Mexico. Gary Bettman had a plan to create a league that could be spread across the land. Unfortunately he was headed in the wrong direction.

All of this brings me back to Stamkos, the unfortunate megastar. Is Tampa Bay a viable NHL market? Well, they won the Stanley Cup in 2004, so did Dallas in 1999 and Carolina in 2006. Has the sport of hockey exploded in these areas as a result? The answer is unequivocally-No.

So the question now is how does the NHL save Steven Stamkos? Talent like his deserves top billing and in a viable hockey market. Can you imagine the buzz if the two-time Rocket Richard winner was dealt to Montreal or Toronto or even Vancouver?

It has been 25 years since the greatest hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, was traded from the cradle of hockey royalty in Edmonton, to the ghetto of the NHL in Los Angeles. While the “Great One” couldn’t deliver the Stanley Cup to Tinseltown, he made hockey stylish and trendy if not somewhat relevant in southern California.

Turns out the NHL decided to put two franchises in the same town that couldn’t and wouldn’t support an NFL team. All you need to know about Gretzky’s career is where it started (Edmonton) and where it ended (New York). That will tell you that even Gretzky and his transcendent presence in the NHL, recognized that it made a hell of a lot more sense to retire in a place where people actually gave a crap and could explain icing.

Ten years after he retired, Stamkos began his career 2835 miles from where Gretzky first stepped on NHL ice. The records set by Gretzky are probably well out of reach from the 23 year-old Stamkos, but hopefully relevant and meaningful hockey are not.