Life is about finding happiness, and hope. In Toronto, hockey has failed to deliver the first very often, but it’s been persistently stubborn about looking for the second. And in a dismal season that everyone is just getting through because it needs to be done, Steven Stamkos coming to town was billed as a circus. Sure, why not. There are all kinds of circuses.

Stamkos, of course, may become an unrestricted free agent, and Toronto would like to sign him. Lots of teams would probably like to sign him, for that matter, but in this town we do tend to blot out the rest of the world.

“This is Toronto,” said Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper, after a 5-4 overtime Lightning win. “This is the hockey Mecca, and people want to know. It’s a story. And he’s probably one of the most talented players to become a UFA in his mid-20s. That doesn’t happen, especially in this era. So of course it’s going to be a story. I understand that.”

Vote!

This being Toronto, of course, we can get a little silly. The radio station TSN1050, owned by Leafs co-owner Bell, printed up signs that read SIGN STAMKOS, but security would not let those signs into the building, on the stated grounds that they are an unauthorized sponsor. Which they are, in this case, despite 1050 broadcasting half the team’s games and being owned by a part owner.

(The real reason, of course, is likely that it could have been considered tampering if the signs had been let into the building. It’s a funny town.)

Otherwise, well, there was . . . a homemade sign or two, and a lonely guy who yelled “We Want Stamkos” in the first period, and nobody joined him. When the Markham-born Stamkos touched the puck, the reaction was a resounding nothing, over and over. He’s the prize free agent-to-be, maybe, but for all the love he was shown by the hometown crowd, Steven Stamkos may as well have been from Toledo. This is a circus? You’d get more excitement in an Eastern European circus full of unshaven clowns and depressed bears in little hats that smoke cigarettes.

“It doesn’t feel that weird,” said Stamkos. “Did it feel weird for you guys? I don’t think there was any difference once the puck dropped. I always like coming to see friends and family. It’s exciting that way. But to be honest, it really felt like any other game.”

Which is fine. If the Leafs get a chance to recruit Stamkos — assuming he makes it to free agency, which isn’t a certainty until it is — they can’t do it with the atmosphere in this building this season, where fans are essentially cheering for laundry and scaffolding. No, the Leafs will need Brendan Shanahan and Mike Babcock to sell the vision, the dream, the aspiration, and a leading role in future glory.

Of course, Toronto has a long history of local-boy superstars who were supposed to come here. Wayne Gretzky, late in his career and afterwards. There were daydreams of John Tavares if he tired of the Islanders, of P.K. Subban if the marriage with the Habs broke apart, of Rick Nash. Sadly, the Leafs weren’t on his trade list.

Leaf fans on Lightning game

Stamkos goes to the grocery store when he’s home in the summer and poses for endless pictures. He has to know it would be a burden to come here, a responsibility. As Erik Erlendsson, the excellent Lightning beat writer for the Tampa Tribune, puts it, it’s a little like Vinny Lecavalier. “Vinny won a cup in Tampa, and everybody talked about how he wanted to go home and play in Montreal, be that native son, be that local kid who comes back and leads the Canadiens to glory, and all he was going to do was fail,” said Erlendsson. “Because he was expected to deliver a Cup to Montreal, and anything else would have fallen short of expectations.

“It’s different with Stamkos because he hasn’t been part of a Cup-winning team. So would he want to leave what he’s known for eight years, a team he’s helped grow to where it’s at, for an uncertain future? Is it better to dance with the devil you know, or the devil you don’t?”

The only person who knows what Steven Stamkos wants is Steven Stamkos, and even he may not know. Not yet, anyway. He said he thinks about it when people ask him about it. It’s probably more, but he wouldn’t say.

Look, maybe he’s a declining asset whose production has dropped since he broke his leg, but maybe for other reasons, too. Maybe he really is a winger waiting to happen. Maybe he wants no part of coming home. Maybe Stamkos is yet another blue-and-white dream, in a lifetime full of them.

But if the door opens Toronto will try for it, and besides, it’s a long, quiet winter around here. You have to have something to talk about, when you’re huddled around the embers of what might one day become a fire.

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