Jake Guentzel will be sticking around in Tampa.
The Lightning on Monday morning signed Guentzel to a seven-year contract worth $9 million per year prior to the start of free agency. The deal will expire when Guentzel will be 36 years old.
The Lightning had acquired Guentzel's rights from the Hurricanes on Sunday in exchange for a third-round pick in 2025, allowing them the exclusive negotiating rights until free agency opened on Monday at noon.
With the ink dry, that trade that sent Guentzel to the Hurricanes in March looks a whole lot better.
The Penguins sent Guentzel to the Hurricanes before the trade deadline last season in exchange for a NHL-rostered player in Michael Bunting, AHL forward prospect Vasily Ponomarev, Finnish forward prospect Ville Koivunen and college forward prospect Cruz Lucius, who all immediately became top-10 prospects within the Penguins' own prospect pool. The Penguins also received the second-round pick from Carolina that originally belonged to the Flyers at No. 44 overall, and used it to address the system's biggest area of need at the draft on Saturday, selecting right-handed defense prospect Harrison Brunicke.
Bunting flourished with the Penguins post-trade. After scoring 36 points (13 goals, 23 assists) in 60 games with Carolina this season, he was close to a point-per-game with the Penguins -- racking up 19 (six goals, 13 assists) in 21 games. Ponomarev and Koivunen are expected to push for NHL time next season -- Ponomarev might have a chance right out of camp -- and while Lucius and Brunicke are younger and going to need a little more time, they're higher-end prospects.
The Hurricanes got 25 points (eight goals, 17 assists) in 17 games out of Guentzel, plus another nine points (four goals, five assists) in 11 playoff games on the road to being eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
Debating who "won" the trade is silly -- it doesn't do the Penguins an ounce of good to have any satisfaction that they ended up with more out of the deal in the long-run than the Hurricanes did. The only question that really matters is whether it was the right move for the Penguins. And especially now, having seen what kind of deal Guentzel was looking for, it's pretty clear that the trade was the right move to make.
Bunting was a good fit in the Penguins' top-six and served in a much-needed net-front role on the power play. He alone isn't going to be as good as Guentzel, but for $4.5 million per year? That's value. Even if Guentzel would have taken some kind of hometown discount on that $9 million per year cap hit, he likely would have been more than the Penguins could have afforded regardless, and losing Guentzel for nothing would have been a real risk. Instead, they have a top-six replacement and four significant additions to the prospect pool, two of whom could be ready for NHL time sooner rather than later.
The Penguins did the right thing.
