Tampa Bay Lightning forward Tyler Johnson isn't big, but what he lacks in stature he makes up for in skill and overall two-way capability.

Last season when Lightning super-sniper Steven Stamkos went down with injury, Johnson was thrust into a prominent role with an upstart Lightning team that shocked the Eastern Conference, not just treading water but excelling in the absence of their first-line center.

Johnson has picked up right where he left off this season, except that with Stamkos present at the top of the lineup, he's free to wreck secondary and tertiary competition while centering Nikita Kucherov on the Lightning's third line. The results have been nothing short of spectacular for Johnson, whose 18 points lead all Lightning players.

Johnson admits that the experience of last season, filling in for the irreplaceable Stamkos, helped accelerate his development into a blue-chip depth centerman.

"You don’t want to really say that, but yeah," Johnson admitted to Craig Custance this weekend (subscription). "I definitely got thrown into situations a lot earlier than I probably would have. I don’t know how things would have been different. ... You don’t want something like that to happen, but at the same time, personally it helped me out."

Now that Stamkos is at full pace, it's helped the Lightning out too.