CRANBERRY TWP., PA (93.7 The Fan) – Before he got to the trade for defenseman Erik Karlsson, Pens GM Kyle Dubas wanted to clear up some information about the injury to forward Jake Guentzel. Their leading goal-scorer will miss the start of the season.
Dubas explained Guentzel ended the 2022-23 season with the ankle injury. They monitored his ankle this off-season along with the Pens medical staff. It wasn’t healing as they had hoped, the team doctor and head trainer gave him guidelines to go through to test it more. Part of that was putting it through some game action in a league near his home in Minnesota.
Guentzel said it wasn’t comfortable enough for him as he was getting up to the prescribed levels of work and they decided they needed to have surgery, even though it was only a little over a month from the start of training camp.
“That will get Jake back up to 100%,” Dubas said Monday. “It’s in Jake’s best interest and it’s best for the team to have him at 100%. We will miss him for the first couple of games of the year, but then he will be back to the Jake that we know, which will be best solution for all of us.”
Dubas said there is the potential Guentzel would only miss five games, but warned it’s a medical issue and the news might not be what they hope.
Filling in for Jake
How do you replace a player with that production and that kind of relationship with Sidney Crosby? The simple answer is you don’t. His approach, and likely that of Pens head coach Mike Sullivan, is to challenge others to win that spot.
“It creates a major opportunity for our own young people that are here, whether that's Alex Nylander or Samuel Poulin, but also I think more importantly that was one of the things we tried to address in free agency,” Dubas said. “Whether it’s Vinnie Hinostroza, Andreas Johnsson, Rem Pitlick, who we acquired with Erik, Zohorna, Puustinen, Nieto, O’Connor-all of those guys that have been wanting their own opportunity and chance to go and get it. And now the knock is there at the door, someone has to answer it.”
“I think that's the one thing we're looking forward to in training camp the most is, you know, there's going to be an opening and there's going to be opportunity. We know we have our own guys that can slide in and do that. Rickard Rakell has played with Sid before, Reilly Smith can play with Sid.”
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“There's all those other people that we brought in to try to improve our depth and certainly on the wings in free agency, that now is this is the opportunity you waited for all this time and you've got six weeks to put yourself in the best spot to take advantage of it.
And I'm just excited to see who comes in and takes it.”