Pittsburgh Penguins trade Jake Guentzel to Carolina Hurricanes

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The Pittsburgh Penguins have traded winger Jake Guentzel to the Carolina Hurricanes.

In a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the Penguins announced the blockbuster deal. The in-division trade was reportedly finalized during a call after both the Penguins and Hurricanes’ games on Thursday.  

“The decision to trade Jake Guentzel, with his contract set to expire this offseason, was one of the most difficult decisions that I have had to make in my time in management,” Penguins president of hockey operations and general manager Kyle Dubas said in a team-issued release on Thursday night.

Jake Guentzel and defenseman Ty Smith are headed to the Hurricanes in exchange for forwards Michael Bunting, Ville Koivunen, Vasily Ponomarev, Cruz Lucius and conditional 2024 first- and fifth-round picks from Carolina, the Penguins announced. 

Placed on injured reserve in mid-February with an upper-body injury, the 29-year-old Guentzel will finish his 2023-24 Penguins campaign with 22 goals and 52 points in 50 games played.

The Minnesota native is leaving the Penguins after eight seasons with the team. He made his NHL debut on Nov. 21, 2016, against the New York Rangers, scoring two goals on his first two shots.

Selected by the Penguins in the third round (No. 77 overall) of the 2013 NHL Draft, he quickly established himself as a productive playoff performer, notching 13 goals in 25 playoff games during the Penguins’ Stanley Cup-winning run of 2016-17. 

Guentzel became the first Penguins rookie to score a playoff hat-trick, and only the second rookie in NHL history to score a hat-trick and overtime goal in the same game of the playoffs, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. 

Guentzel recorded 21 points during the 2016-17 playoffs to tie the NHL rookie record and scored five game-winning goals to set an NHL rookie mark.

Then-general manager of the Penguins, Jim Rutherford, gave Guentzel a five-year, $30 million contract extension in December 2018.

He leaves the Penguins as the 11th-leading scorer in franchise history, tallying 219 goals and 466 points in 503 career games. He tallied 40-goal seasons in 2018-19 and 2021-22.

Guentzel is set to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2023-24 season.

The NHL trade deadline is Friday at 3 p.m.  

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