After nearly a decade in black and gold, veteran winger Chris Kunitz wore the Tampa Bay Lightning‘s blue and white for the first time this week, donning the Bolts’ logo for an introductory scrum with the Tampa Bay media.
The transition is sure to be an interesting one for Kunitz, who concluded his unrestricted free-agency by signing a one-year, $2 million deal with the Lightning earlier this month. The four-time champion previously went from an Anaheim Ducks squad stocked with legends like Teemu Selanne, Scott Neidermayer and Ryan Getzlaf to a Pittsburgh Penguins locker room led by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
Being part of the Lightning’s 2017-18 roster may not feel too different for Kunitz, however, as the club seems to stack up pretty well against the 37-year-old’s former team in his eyes.
“You start it with the captain of the team who’s a dominant player and, when healthy, can drive an organization,” Kunitz said of Steven Stamkos, according to the team. “[And] the back end with elite guys like [Victor] Hedman and [Dan] Girardi coming in with some playoff experience. They obviously have a talented group of forwards who have speed and skill, young youth to it. So it’s a lot of similarities.”
The Lightning roster doesn’t have quite the dominant depth that the Penguins are able to roll out, but they do boast two premier scorers in Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov, along with some key depth talents up front like Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat.
Though the loss of key players in Jonathan Drouin and Ben Bishop – the former dealt to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Mikhail Sergachev and the latter who will be manning the net for Dallas next season – could set the Lightning back a few steps next season, the names still on the roster were apparently enough to bring Kunitz aboard.
“Tampa was one team that we kind of focused on early on,” Kunitz said of his free-agency strategy. “Just with their roster and how close they are to winning when the team is healthy.”
The Olympic gold medalist went as far as to place the Lightning among the top contenders in the game.
“I would say [Tampa Bay] is in those top three or four teams that I think everybody would agree that they’re just that close [to a Stanley Cup],” Kunitz said. “When healthy, any team with this dynamic of a roster can beat anybody every single night. They have positional players who can win a game on their own, like a goaltender or dynamic forwards or D-men who can step up, so I think it has to be one of the favourite teams to be able to go in and try to make a run at it.”
The four-time champion should be fairly familiar with the Lightning, having battled through a hard-fought seven-game series against the club during the 2016 Eastern Conference Final. Pushing the eventual champs to a 3-2 series deficit seems to have had a lasting impression on the veteran.
“The depth of the organization – the forwards they could throw at you and the speed and skill which they can play with,” Kunitz said. “They were missing key players at that time and had us on the brink.”
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