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[Yohe] Jake Guentzel: “My intention was to stay. They thought there was a better direction.”

  • March 27, 2024


[Yohe] Jake Guentzel: “My intention was to stay. They thought there was a better direction.”

30 comments

  2. This is definitely fed from his agent, but yikes. Does not reflect well on Kyle/management

  4. Rumors pointed to this. People around the team said Dubas didn’t negotiate after initial talks this past summer.

    Whole situation was handled poorly. Extremely hard to replace him also.

  6. Okay then re-sign in the offseason. Oh you want your pay day? Fine but don’t come out with quotes like this.

    I don’t know. Are we really going to hammer Dubas for not giving out ANOTHER long term contract to a 30+ player? I love Jake and wish he could’ve stayed too but I don’t blame him for not wanting to give out a 7-8 year deal when we’ll be rebuilding here soon.

  7. Wasn’t he offered a 6-year, $50 mil contract and he declined? If he was so inclined to stay, why didn’t him and his agent make a counter?

  8. His intention was to stay, but wouldn’t work on a contract until the end of a season. We had no choice but to trade him and im glad we did. I think he could still come back if he wanted to. Even sid said he still talks to him a lot

  9. Way to rabble rouse Yohe. Jagoff.

    I’m gonna go enjoy tonight’s win and not worry about crap like this from joke journalists.

  10. Yohe and being a sycophantic mouthpiece for players he likes’ agents to hamper management since Rutherford leaving forced him to actually work: name a more iconic duo.

  11. I will never blame a player for getting the bag when they can but don’t come out and feed stuff like this to the media when really he means “my intentions were to stay for the right price”

  12. Once the season became a lost cause, what Jake wanted was irrelevant. He needed to be traded. And if they had locked him up in the off-season then that would have been a huge mistake in retrospect considering the team was mostly crap and getting crappier.

  13. Again, said it all the way up to it. The time to make a change was summer of 22. You had major pieces coming off the board, malkin, Letang, rust. You could have used that as a time to say we are taking a step back but we value Crosby and his time here. We will enter rebuild and by 2024 or 2025 we will be back with the haul we get. Hextall said no, and we have what we have.

    Didn’t help in 23 or 24. 25 doesn’t look better so whatever. The ship is sailed

  14. genuine question — how often do players say “my intention was to sign elsewhere in the offseason”

    ​

    i can only recall panarin, bobrovsky, dubois, and they were exceptional

  15. Then come back for like $8-9M bro! Still in the cards lol just don’t expect $10M+. I really do wonder how much a couple million dollars when you’re making tens of millions of dollars matters to guys vs. familiarity/comfort/legacy/etc.

  16. I love Jake but it just wasn’t meant to be. The team needed assets and couldn’t afford to lose him for nothing in a season where they missed the playoffs.

    That and the money would have been too high.

  18. It’s really fair to feel slighted by losing your favorite player at the deadline but at the end of the day you really have to come to terms with the fact that this team fucking sucked *with* Guentzel in the lineup and him staying likely wouldn’t have moved the needle towards us making the playoffs.

    Moving on from that, him and his agent did not want to discuss a contract until the end of the season for a reason. They’re gonna command 10+. Could we afford that? Sure. Should we spend that on one guy that’s about to turn 30 up until he’s 38-39? Absolutely not. Our blue line is a mess. Our bottom 6 needs another overhaul. We can’t address any of that if we spend everything we have in space on one person.

  19. Nah. Definitely a lot of bullshit here. Guentzel is going to get paid and good for him. But don’t try to spin this as Guentzel wanted to stay. He knows his value and if he wanted to stay he would’ve agreed instead of being traded. This is another garbage piece by the media.

  20. Can we not talk about the changes to the roster to make a difference. This isn’t 30 years ago where the league was diluted due to expansion. There are capable players all over this roster and have been. We don’t need another overhaul of a bottom six for special teams to familiarize over a quarter of the seasons games, to waste points.

    We need a new voice in the room. And a new coaching staff. Someone to rally the players in the damn locker room. We’re older, I get it. But it’s their job to grab the players ear and put a system on the ice that works.

    Look at Edmonton. They fire their coach and win 16 games in a row. IT WAKES PLAYERS UP. We won after we fired Therrian in 09’ and we won after we fired Johnston in 15’.

    Jake would’ve been worth every penny and we’d re-tool. Did we crash and burn with the bottom 6 in 15’-16’ or when we had the worst D core to win a cup in history in 17’ when Sid and Geno were near 30. No, we brought guys up from Wilkes and brought in a new voice.

    Dubas didn’t want to be the guy to fire a coaching staff in year one. Trading Jake was much more palatable.

  21. How often does a player take abuse or career changes for their agent’s stubbornness?

  22. Yeah, if anything this kinda a bad look on Jake. He had a price that Dubas didn’t feel he could meet.

    So what he means is, “my intention was to come back at my price.”

  23. My intention was to stay*

    * = if I felt like depending on how the season ended and how much money I am offered this summer

  24. Nah fuck this. No reasonable fan faulted him for wanting a payday Dubas was apparently not able to meet. But don’t start this bullshit Jake.

  26. Yeah I’m sure he’d love to stay for 12 mil a year and not a penny less. He knew the situation, choosing not to negotiate made the decision for us. C’mon Jake.

  27. The “better direction” was to make sure the team got something for him instead of getting Tavares’d like we did with Robert Lang.

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