Penguins Emerge as Top SUITOR for SUTER
2019-02-22PITTSBURGH - General Manager Ian Gurtowski announced today that the Penguins hace acquired all-star defenseman Ryan Suter from the New York Rangers in exchange for Jakob Chychrun, Milan Lucic, Ryan Poehling, Blake McLaughlin, and a 2019 first round pick.
"When your GM goes out and swings a trade for a player of Ryan's caliber, obviously it's indicative of how well the team has played this season and it's a rewarding feeling to see your GM has that kind of confidence in you." said Claude Julien at this morning's presser.
Suter, who has three years remaining after this season at an annual average value of $5.005M, brings in a wealth of experience, serving as the Florida Panthers captain from 2014 to earlier this season when he was traded to the Rangers.
"Yeah, I think it's huge for our club." said center Paul Stastny "I've known Suits for a long time, back to our days of playing for Team USA in World Championships and Olympics. He's obviously a hell of a player and the fact that we have him on our team is huge. He's easily the best defenseman in the world and we're going to love having him here to shut down teams in our division, especially Carolina."
GM Gurtowski: "You're obviously always nervous when making a trade of this magnitude, given the futures that we gave up to acquire Ryan. You always hate to wonder if you 'could of had' a certain player years after you orginally drafted him. But we felt with how our team was playing and where our prospect pool was, we could make this trade, especially considering we'll have Suits for a minimum of 3+ seasons, which is our window to get as many Cups as we can."
The Penguins (25-12-3) look to end their three game losing skid tomorrow night against the Boston Bruins (22-16-3) who have won four in a row.