There are still reminders, just about every day. Steven Stamkos has mornings when he wakes up and the leg he broke last season in Boston is stiff. Or there’s a momentary scare for coach Jon Cooper like the one Sunday evening in Detroit, when Stamkos skated back to the bench shaking the leg a little bit, enough that Cooper checked in quickly to make sure it was nothing serious. It wasn’t.

A little ache, a little pain, a daily reminder of that moment last season when Stamkos slammed into the goalpost and altered what was shaping up to be a memorable season.

It’s starting to sink in that this is the new normal for the Lightning captain.

“That’s the million-dollar question: Is it ever going to feel the same way [as] before? It may never,” Stamkos said. “I’m hoping one day you wake up and there’s no little pain, no discomfort -- it just feels like a regular leg. I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

Tuesday marks one-year since the painful injury occurred, and Stamkos is still making the slow climb back to the dominant player he was then. Statistically, he’s there. He scored his ninth and 10th goals of the season in Tampa Bay’s win over Detroit on Sunday, which puts him one goal off NHL leaders Corey Perry and Rick Nash. His 16 points equal guys like Logan Couture, Patrick Marleau and Henrik Zetterberg and top players like Perry, John Tavares and Ryan Getzlaf.

He’s producing, so we understand why Cooper quickly shrugs off any suggestion that Stamkos isn’t quite back.

“If he scores 10 goals every 15 games, I think we’re in pretty good shape,” Cooper said after Sunday's game.

The explosive skating that Stamkos flashed on Sunday hasn’t been there every single night, and he’s the first to suggest that there’s room for growth in his game.