Ottawa Reporter Insists Mark Stone Never Wanted to Leave Senators

At the 2019 NHL trade deadline, the Ottawa Senators traded the biggest name on the market, Mark Stone, to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Stone succeded to lead his new team in scoring in the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, where they were eliminated in the first round by the San Jose Sharks.

Before he was traded, it was reported that Stone wanted to stay in Ottawa, but the Sens weren't willing to match his asking price for a contract extension, causing them to move him rather than lose him for nothing in free agency starting July 1st.

The 27-year-old was the big fish to land when the trade deadline came around, and was targeted by almost every contender which only shows what type of player he truly is. However, his preference would have been to stay with the Sens, and he even made it public at times this past season.

One Senators reporter later confirmed Stone's wishes by correcting a fan who believed the player wanted out, stating that Stone never declined a contract extension that included the kind of number he was asking for, but Ottawa never offered it to him. He wanted to stay with the team that drafted him and stated that he tried as much as he could to stay. The organization was simply going a different direction and that he was not involved in their long-term plans.

Stone was drafted by the Senators in the sixth round of the 2010 NHL Draft and spent six and a half years with the team. In his time, he scored 123 goals in 366 games, and registered 311 total points.

Stone was a part of the Ottawa team that made a deep playoff run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2016-17, appearing in 19 postseason games and registering 8 points.

Regardless of what happened at the deadline this year, Stone has found a proper home in Vegas, where he immediately signed an eight-year extension with the Knights worth $9.5 million per year.