Lightning Makes a Sensation, Acquires Rights to Carolina’s Jake Guentzel

TAMPA — General manager Julien BriseBois wasted no time exploiting the Lightning’s new salary space. And in his shopping frenzy, he took the lead Sunday by landing one of the top pending unrestricted free agents to make next season’s team a stronger Stanley Cup contender.

A day after trading defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to Utah and saying goodbye to Steven Stamkos, the face of the franchise, the Lightning acquired the rights to winger Jake Guentzel from the Hurricanes. The transaction gives the Lightning exclusive negotiating rights to reach a deal with Grentzel before free agency begins Monday at noon.

In exchange for Guentzel, the Lightning gave up a third-round pick in the 2025 draft.

Guentzel, 29, seems like a perfect fit for the Lightning, a player who scored for years in Pittsburgh, playing with elite talent on a top line with Sidney Crosby and only improved his stock with a stellar playoff run after moving to Carolina at the trade deadline. He could slide in on left wing on either of the Lightning’s top two lines, essentially replacing Stamkos.

Guentzel had 30 goals and 77 points in 67 games last season with Pittsburgh and Carolina. He recorded 25 of those points in 17 games once he arrived with the Hurricanes.

Twenty-five of Guentzel’s 30 goals have come at 5-on-5, which would improve a Lightning team that relied too heavily on its power play last season.

Among the things that stand out most about Guentzel is his plus-25 rating, which would give the Lightning the two-way ratio BriseBois said he needs to make them a better team defensively.

Guentzel won the Stanley Cup as a rookie with the Penguins in 2016-17 and was an accomplished player in the playoffs, scoring 38 goals and 67 points in 69 Stanley Cup playoff games. He scored four even-strength goals and nine points in 11 playoff games with Carolina.

Heading into free agency, Guentzel was considered one of the best players on the market. Carolina wanted to keep him, and other contenders like Vancouver were in the mix. Carolina reportedly offered him an eight-year, $64 million contract to stay.

After vesting his rights, the Lightning can now sign him for up to seven years, as he was not on their reserve list at the trade deadline.

The Lightning likely would have had some indication from Guentzel’s agent that he would be willing to sign if they traded his rights a day before the market opened, especially after trading a third-round pick.

In recent years, the Lightning have found themselves on the opposite end of those deals, trading away the rights to players like Barclay Goodrow and Corey Perry to get seventh-round picks when they couldn’t retain players due to a lack of cap space.

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But after trading Sergachev and forward Tanner Jeannot on Saturday, the Lightning have a $16.5 million cap hit — they entered Saturday with just $5.335 million — opening the door for BriseBois to pursue a big fish like Guentzel, especially after the GM didn’t improve. its existing offering to Stamkos following the transactions.

“I expect us to concentrate (coverage space) on our attacking group,” BriseBois said Saturday night. “Now, does one player get most of that cap space, do two players share it, three players share it? It’s too early to tell at this stage. At the same time, there is also a commercial opportunity that has just arisen that I think we need to explore and maybe that’s the route we’re going to take or it could be a combination.

And now an offseason that two months ago seemed focused on signing Stamkos and extending defenseman Victor Hedman has taken a completely different direction.

The Lightning are among the most active teams in free agency. In the past two days, they not only acquired the rights to Guentzel, but also received 24-year-old defenseman JJ Moser, a top-four defenseman, from Utah to help fill the minutes of Sergachev, a former No. 11 overall pick who immediately becomes the organization’s top prospect; forward Conor Geekie, and added four draft picks to their inventory. An extension is still possible for Hedman, who can sign Monday at the earliest.

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