The Tampa Bay Lightning have acquired the rights to pending free agent Jake Guentzel from the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for Tampa’s 2025 third-round pick (Twitter link).
Never ones to be subtle, it seems Tampa is taking their cap squeeze into their own hands – ending speculation about all-time Bolt Steven Stamkos, who is expected to become an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his 16-year NHL career on Monday. In response, Tampa has taken a page from the Toronto Maple Leafs’ book – moving assets to give them a head start in negotiating with one of the market’s top free agents.
This is Guentzel’s second move in the last four months, after joining the Carolina Hurricanes for a king’s ransom at the Trade Deadline. To get Guentzel, the Hurricanes had to give up NHL winger Michael Bunting; prospects Vasili Ponomarev, Ville Koivunen, and Cruz Lucius; and the 2024 second-round draft pick used to select Harrison Brunicke. But Carolina certainly got what they paid for – with Guentzel transitioning seamlessly from the role of Sidney Crosby’s sidekick to standalone star beautifully. He recorded eight goals and 25 points in 17 regular season games with the Hurricanes, bringing his season total up to 30 goals and 77 points in 67 games – a 95-point pace across 82 games. What’s more, Guentzel held true to his claim as a fantastic playoff performer, ranking third on the team with nine points in 11 postseason games.
Guentzel scored at the highest pace of his career this season, even despite the midyear change of scenery. And yet, it’s hard to call it a breakout year – with Guentzel having recorded 40 goals in both the 2019 and 2022 seasons, finishing with 76 and 84 points in the respective years. But he did prove he can maintain, and maybe even improve upon, his scoring in colors other than black and gold.
That’s incredibly encouraging for Tampa Bay, who will soon be without the 40 goals and 81 points that a 34-year-old Stamkos managed this year. It was Stamkos’ third-straight season of 80-or-more points – adding 40 goals in two of those years. He’s shown no signs of slowing down, bouncing back well from injury-marred seasons in 2020 and 2021. Stamkos will be entering unprecedented territory when he hits the open market, and while it’s hard to gauge what price, term, or role he could be looking for, there’s no doubting that his new team will be landing one of the league’s perennial goal-scorers.
Meanwhile, the Lightning should have plenty of room to find Guentzel a contract he’s happy with – after moving Mikhail Sergachev to the Utah Hockey Club and Tanner Jeannot to the Los Angeles Kings. That opened up over $11MM in cap space, bringing Tampa’s breathing room up to $16.5MM. They will have to stay mindful of their spending, though, with star defenseman and probable new captain Victor Hedman becoming eligible for an extension on Monday. He’ll play through the last year of his $7.875MM cap hit this season, and stand for a hefty raise on what will likely be the last contact of his career. Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois has made sure to mention Hedman’s next contract right alongside the Stamkos speculation – showing how much importance the team is placing on not losing multiple pillars.
Bye bye Stamkos.
Nah. They going to sign both of these guys. They are going to make it work and a selling point to stamkos of more rings. Hedman getting a deal too. This the time to do it.
This is one of the most delusional things I’ve read on this site.
3rd rd pick? Please some team outbid Tampa!
TBL is being aggressive & I suspect a deal will get done by today with Jake Guentzel. TBL has plenty of cap space with $16.5 million to play with. People around the league at the draft said TBL was going to the team to watch during FA.
As for Stamkos, this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of his time in TBL as they’ll have plenty of cap space leftover to sign him to the $4 to $5 million AAV he’s asking for.
Ya they have 16.5, if you think they will sign both these guys, how they filling out the rest of team- only 16 contracts with the 16.5 space.
The D doesn’t look great at the moment.
They gave up a lot of goals last yr, and have not improved there at all.
Jake to 8 x 8.5, Duclair to 3 x 3.25, Moser to 1 x 1.2, and 3+M to fill the other 3 spots and run with 22 for a while
you know why? cuz their “#1 defenseman” has never checked anyone in front of the net in his entire life & turns the puck over all the time… while never having the finger of criticism pointed his way. you’re right they haven’t improved there at all – they traded the wrong guy.
They re-acquired Ryan McDonugh who’s a top-four level shut down defenseman (that alone is an improvement). They recently acquired J.J. Moser which according to what I’ve read is he’s a solid bottom 4 defenseman. Furthermore, TBL seems confident in their young guys like Lilliberg & Crozier who now have had significant experience last season & will only improve going into this upcoming season.
BriseBois yesterday stated their focus is on forward group going into FA. So it doesn’t appear they’re worried about the D-Line from the looks of it.
as long as #77 is the “#1 defenseman” & eating up a lot of cap space, their defense is always gonna be somewhat of a problem.
I don’t find Victor Hedman as the problem as he was their best D-man by a landslide with 70 plus points last season. Hedman took on a lot with a D-Line that lacked significant inexperience & yet he still finished 6th in voting for the Norris Trophy this year. Cernak’s inconsistent health & Perbix’s turnover ratio in his own zone (which was horrid) is more of a concern for the team.
Hedman’s extension is expected to be less AAV than his current AAV.
He knocked Datsyuk’s chicklets out! But yeah, that was in the corner.
Funny thing, the ref gave Pavel the penalty for retaliating.
best defenseman cuz he scores. LMAO. a defenseman’s first priority is, you know, DEFENSE. & 77 is TRASH in his own zone. no worse than perbix. in fact, big softie hedman dumped the puck to perbix on many occasions, putting perbix in a bad position & guess who got the blame? guess who NEVER gets the blame? i could care SQUAT about the norris trophy voting. another defensive bum (although he’s even better than hedman offensively) was karlson. i’m sure he’s a norris trophy darling as well. give me Hanifan or any solid defenseman anyday. i’m sure we’ll be hearing AGAIN all next year about us giving up so many high scoring chances & turning the puck over in our own end. again, the golden child will be absolved of it all.
A 3rd round pick for 1 day to negotiate a contract? Please tell me there’s some kind of condition that pushes it down if they aren’t able to get a deal done. All they had to do was wait one day and they could of made their case for free. If he wants to go there he will. The pick was stupid IMO.
The big kicker is Tampa can now offer an 8th year which no other team can offer.
They cant offer an 8 year deal without a sign-and-trade.
Righto! They can only go up to 7 years because he wasn’t on the roster as of a deadline date (whereas Carolina could have gone up to 8). My mistake too, saying 8 years.
Smart move by Lightning
hedman “standing for a hefty raise?” LMAO. good thing you’re not a GM. When has Hedman ever been an asset on defense? Every single freaking year this team gives up more high quality scoring chances and has more turnovers in the defensive end than just about every other team in the league and need the best goaltender in the league to bail them out. And all we hear is commentators and announcers and people affiliated with the team say we’ve got to stop doing it! but they never point the finger at the main culprit. it’s always someone besides 77. Last year the main punching bag was Perbix. The golden calf avoids any criticism… when he is supposedly our #1 defenseman.
The next time that 240 pound soft as the michelin man clown checks anybody in front of the net & clears them out will be the first.
Stamkos and Kane to Detroit. New extensions for Raymond and Seider. Resign Gostisbehere. Add a defenseman. Detroit to the playoffs.
Petry and Holl gone too?
I feel like if they were going to move Holl’s contract, it would’ve happened already instead of Walman. They will shop him and listen for offers, but at this point Detroit would have to eat a chunk of the salary anyway. My guess is he’s around at the start of the season, but would be happy to see him gone. Petry might be the odd man out if Detroit pursues another defenseman alongside Gostisbehere.
A 3nd rounder is a lot unless there is a deal in place. ELSE why not wait a day?