{"id":176374,"date":"2026-03-03T14:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T14:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/176374\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T14:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T14:58:07","slug":"bolts-best-player-of-the-month-jake-guentzel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/176374\/","title":{"rendered":"Bolts Best Player of the Month: Jake Guentzel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Solid February for Jake Guentzel!<\/p>\n<p>To get things started, the Bolts center put up eight points in six games for the Lightning, including the game-winning shootout goal to seal a win at the\u00a0NHL Stadium Series. He notched two assists in that game, helping to lead a legendary comeback at Raymond James Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>He then joined Team USA in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics, in which Guentzel brought home the gold medal after a historic OT win over Canada in the final.<\/p>\n<p>Now? He\u2019s our Bolts Best Player of the Month.<\/p>\n<p>The Lightning went 4-2 for the month with help from a 2-6-8 line from Guentzel. He also recorded a goal in the early rounds of the Winter Games and finished the tournament plus-2.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnbelievable two weeks,\u201d Guentzel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/lightning\/news\/lightning-forward-jake-guentzel-team-usa-felt-destined-to-win-gold-at-unbelievable-olympics\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Ben Pierce of the Lightning<\/a>. \u201cIt&#8217;s pretty incredible what we were able to accomplish over in Milan, and it&#8217;s been a long time coming for USA Hockey to get the gold medal. So we feel pretty blessed. I&#8217;m super proud of the group, and I was just obviously very thankful for the opportunity to represent the USA in the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Up next for Guentzel: the Lightning head out on a four-game road trip in which they will try to recapture their pre-Olympics momentum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Solid February for Jake Guentzel! To get things started, the Bolts center put up eight points in six&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-176374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}