TAMPA, Fla. -- Chris Kunitz has no hard feelings toward the Penguins, even though it's increasingly clear they never made an offer over the summer to bring him back.
He also isn't complaining in the slightest about how the summer turned out.
"I'm happy to be here. I'm excited," he was telling me Thursday morning after the Lightning's skate at Amalie Arena in advance of the 7:38 p.m. faceoff against his former fellow Stanley Cup champions and best buds. "I think of all the different things that went into all this, and we're happy we made the decision we did."
The "we" is very Kunitz, always mindful and respectful of his wife Maureen because "that's how it's got to be with two little ones running around." But it's also authentic, as with everything else about the man.
On the morning of July 1, the opening of the NHL's free agency, the couple sat at their home in the South Hills waiting to find out about their family's future. Kunitz had been fairly certain the Penguins wouldn't call, but he did get a few rings. And by evening's end, pen was put to paper for a year and $2 million with Tampa Bay.
Since then, living changes and school choices aside, this very day had been circled.
"I knew this would mean a lot to me," Kunitz recalled, "because maybe it would be that game where I'd really turn the page."
That actually would happen a good bit sooner. When Hurricane Irma was climbing Florida's Gulf Coast and taking aim at the Tampa Bay region, the Kunitz family evacuated back to Pittsburgh for a few days. And in that time, he skated with some of the still-current Penguins at the Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry Township.
Which one would think would have pulled him emotionally back toward Pittsburgh.
"It was really more of a closure for me," he said. "I'm out there wearing the blue jersey, dressing in a different room ... everything felt kind of different right then."
Upon arriving at camp, he was welcomed warmly, in particular by team captain and franchise fixture Steven Stamkos, who'd known him from shared ventures on Team Canada in international competition.
"What you see right away in Kuni is the example that he can set, the professionalism," Stamkos was saying two stalls away Thursday morning. "He's a winner. Our guys are fortunate to be out there and in here in the room with a guy like that."
That's mutual, of course. It takes only a casual survey of NHL season forecasts to see that anyone not taking the Penguins to three-peat is taking the Lightning, and with good reason well beyond their 2-1 start. They've got a bona fide star in Nikita Kucherov, they've got Stamkos healthy, they're loaded up front beyond those two, they've got an elite defenseman in Victor Hedman, another stalwart in Anton Stralman, and one of the game's best young goaltenders in Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Remember, Kunitz's career is defined by championships, and not just the three Cup rings in Pittsburgh. He had one previously with the Ducks, his total of four the most of any active NHL player, as well as an Olympic gold medal in Sochi.
I asked if he felt this Tampa Bay team might represent still more:
As for the parting with the Penguins ...
Neither side has come right out and stated that the team never made an offer, undoubtedly out of respect for his remarkable decade in Pittsburgh. But there have been plenty of hints to that effect, including Kunitz this morning visibly fidgeting when the subject inevitably arose and saying, "I wouldn't say we were close. I think you could say the writing was on the wall with all the young forwards they've got coming and the cap space and everything else."
And in the same breath, Kunitz, who turned 38 two weeks ago and had seemed plenty aware even through the playoffs that he wasn't coming back -- his teammates raving on the night he beat Ottawa with the Game 7 overtime goal in the Eastern Conference final that he performed as he did under that weight -- had nothing remotely ill to say about it: "I understand it. It's business. I think all of us understand it as professional athletes."
Monday night, he scored this very Kunitz-like first goal for Tampa Bay in a 4-3 overtime win over the Capitals:
Welcome to the #Bolts, Kuni! ⚡️ #WSHvsTBL pic.twitter.com/9BlsZiLEf1
— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) October 10, 2017
And now comes this first formal reunion.
Any thoughts on that?
"Ah, I'm not much of a talker," he said. "I mean, I still communicate with those guys, just friendly stuff. But we've got a hockey game to play. I'll be looking to play my game out there, throw a few hits, make traffic."
The guy two stalls down grinned.
"I'm sure he's going to have a little extra step tonight, no doubt. He's won with those guys," Stamkos said. "That's what we hope to do with him on our side."