Steven Stamkos remains on course to become a free agent, Lightning GM and agent confirm

Steven Stamkos is still on course to become a free agent even after the Tampa Bay Lightning cleared significant salary cap space with trades made at the NHL draft.

General manager Julien BriseBois and agent Don Meehan on Saturday independently confirmed their stances have not changed with respect to Stamkos signing a new contract with the club before free agency opens Monday.

“We’re both going to go ahead and follow through with our due diligence, seeing what’s out there and seeing what’s best,” BriseBois said following the conclusion of the draft. "My responsibility is to see what’s best for the Lightning organization, and Steven has to do what’s best for him, his career and his family. So, unless something changes between now and July 1 — and it doesn’t look like it will — we will get to July 1.”

BriseBois said he did not increase his previous offer to Stamkos after trading two-time Stanley Cup-winning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to Utah and depth forward Tanner Jeannot to Los Angeles on Saturday.

While each side has expressed a willingness to make something work, there was a chance of a separation when BriseBois did not approach Stamkos and his camp a year ago about a possible extension.

“That was a risk I was taking when I didn’t go to Steven a year early to try to lock him up and get a contract done,” BriseBois said following the draft. ”I was taking a risk by doing that that we may end up here, and now here we are. And to be fair, I think both parties have tried to get a deal done up to this point. We just haven’t been able to yet.”

BriseBois added that he told Meehan it was in the best interest of the organization to explore all options in the coming days, including trades and other free agents.

"Steven’s earned the right to test free agency," BriseBois said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there in terms of if in fact we do end up going our separate ways.”

Stamkos at 34 becomes one of the top players available to the league’s other 31 teams. He has been the face of the franchise since the Lightning picked him first in the 2008 draft, and he has served as captain since 2014, lifting the Cup twice as part of the organization's back-to-back run in 2020 and ’21.

Injured during a vast majority of the bubble playoffs four years ago, Stamkos scored a memorable goal on his first and only shot of the series in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final. It is one of his 50 in the playoffs as a member of the Lightning.

Stamkos during the regular season has scored 555 goals to go along with 582 assists for 1,137 points in 1,082 games. He ranks 30th on the career regular-season goal-scoring list and is third among active players behind just Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.

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FILE - Tampa Bay Lightning center Steven Stamkos moves the puck during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Los Angeles Kings, March 23, 2024, in Los Angeles. Stamkos is still on course to become a free agent even after the Lightning cleared significant salary cap space with trades made at the NHL draft. General manager Julien BriseBois and agent Don Meehan independently confirmed their stances have not changed with respect to Stamkos signing a new contract with the club before free agency opens Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court opened the door Monday to new, broad challenges to regulations long after they take effect, the third blow in a week to federal agencies.

The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of a truck stop in North Dakota that wants to sue over a regulation on debit card swipe fees that the federal appeals court in Washington upheld 10 years ago.

Federal law sets a six-year deadline for broad challenges to regulations. In this case, the regulation from the Federal Reserve governing the fees merchants must pay banks whenever customers use a debit card took effect in 2011.

The deadline for lawsuits over the regulation was in 2017, the Biden administration argued. A federal appeals court agreed that Corner Post, a truck stop in Watford City in western North Dakota, mounted its challenge too late, even though it didn’t open its doors until 2018.

The company appealed to the Supreme Court. The administration had urged the court to uphold the dismissal because otherwise, governmental agencies would be subject to endless challenges.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court’s conservative majority that the six-year clock didn’t begin to run for Corner Post until it started accepting debit cards when it opened for business in 2018.

The decision could take on new significance in the wake of last week's ruling that overturned the 1984 Chevron decision that had made it easier to uphold regulations across a wide swath of American life. The court also stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool to fight securities fraud.

In a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, "The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government." Loper Bright is the case that overturned Chevron.

Barrett called Jackson's claim “baffling — indeed, bizarre,” though she agreed with Jackson that Congress could step in to change the time frame for challenging regulations.

Dan Jarcho, a former Justice Department lawyer who has been following the case, predicted that parties like Corner Post would win their cases more often following this term's rulings. "Combined with last week’s decision eliminating Chevron deference, the Corner Post decision will unquestionably lead to more successful litigation challenges to federal regulations, no matter which agency issued them,” Jarcho said.

Chief Justice John Roberts captured the dilemma facing the court when the Corner Post case was argued in February. Agencies could face repeated challenges “10 years later, 20 years later” and “sort of have to create the universe, you know, repeatedly.”

On the other hand, Roberts said, “You have an individual or an entity that is harmed by something the government is doing, and you’re saying, well, that’s just too bad, you can’t do anything about it because other people had six years to do something about it.”

The legal principle that everybody is entitled to their day in court, Roberts said, “doesn’t say unless somebody else had a day in court."

Roberts was part of Monday's majority.

The Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, June 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)