Brandon Tanev rips into Jeff Skinner with profanity-filled roast

With the holidays right around the corner, Seattle Kraken forward Brandon Tanev may be auditioning for the role of The Grinch.

During Monday’s 7-4 victory, Tanev took aim at Buffalo Sabres forward Jeff Skinner, singling him out for his eight-year, $72-million contract, a deal that isn’t aging well to say the least.

“Skinner! You f—ing suck! How the f— did you get that deal?” Tanev asked Skinner as the two players chirped each other while going to their respective benches.

Since Tanev asked so kindly, here’s how Skinner’s deal went down: he was traded from the Carolina Hurricanes to the Sabres in August 2018, coming off a season where he posted 24 goals and 49 points in 82 games. In his first season with the Sabres, Skinner was exactly the player they bargained for, posting a career-best 40 goals and 63 points, playing in all 82 games. As a result, he was handsomely rewarded with an eight-year, $72-million extension.

At the time, the deal was considered an overpay with the potential to backfire, but you could also easily make a fair argument that it was well-deserved for a then-27-year-old with four 30-goal seasons to his name.

The rest is history: Skinner was inexplicably pulled from a line with Jack Eichel, his production fell off a cliff and he’s failed to reproduce anything close to resembling the form that earned him his lucrative extension in the first place.

We’re pretty certain Tanev wasn’t thinking about the minutiae of Skinner’s deal when roasting him Monday, but we did have to provide some context.

As for Tanev, who signed a six-year, $21-million extension with the Penguins in July 2019 and was made available for the Kraken’s expansion draft earlier this year, let’s hope for karma’s sake that his own production doesn’t tail off during the midway point of his contract.

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