Edited Apr. 6 at 8:46 a.m.
Quoting: aadoyle
Not gonna pound WSH for selling Edmundson but Pitt may have ****ed themselves selling Guentzel especially with how things be going rn (they may actually make it)
And when u consider what they got back man this be a yikes and a half
Bunting has more 5v5 goals than Guentzel since the trade. More 5v5 points. More hits. More takeaways.
I don’t see those trends stopping ever. Guentzel did not deserve the icetime in Pittsburg and they’re seeing what happens when it’s properly distributed.
Pittsburg upgraded when they moved Guentzel because he is ——mid——(relative to elite wingers given all the minutes). Replacing his icetime was easy. The return was exceptional because Guentzel is not. People just assumed he was exceptional because the penguins played him 21 min a game with a goat. Jaden Schwartz would look really good playing 21 minutes every game with Crosby, get every pp1, double shifted for pp2, every good offensive minute. It wouldn’t mean Jaden Schwartz is Mitch Marner, he’d still be Jaden Schwartz - a guy who needs to have the energy to explode with the puck to get past some d and if you give him 21 min a game he can’t do that because that’s not how sprinting works.
It is extremely difficult to earn 21 min a game as a winger. You have to not only have absurd offensive skills, but the intelligence to conserve energy and awareness to play 2-ways. There are maybe 2-3 wingers worth that any given season (Marner now, historical puck possession gods like Datsyuk, prime patrick Kane, etc.) Guentzel is nowhere near the list of those skaters. He’s missing half the tools. He is on an entirely different tier of player, well below those who do “deserve” the highest workload. Playing him as if he were locked potential, creativity, probably was the source of some resentment, and disrupted the proper use of energy and matchups during the game.
The penguins built a trap, put themselves in it, thrashed about when their new gm freed them from the trap, and now have been the 4th best team in the east since.