The Kessel issue
Babcock must make him an asset again. Cox,
As the Maple Leafs contemplate a future with or without team captain Dion Phaneuf and sniper Phil Kessel, it would behoove Brendan Shanahan to consider one crucial truth.
If they part with either right now, they’ll be selling low. Never a good strategy. With Kessel, the threat of the Leafs moving a player for below his actual market value is even more real than that of Phaneuf. The combination of reduced production, a reputation for being in average physical condition at best and the stigma of being labelled a “coach killer” has probably reduced Kessel’s trade value to an all-time low. Which leaves the club with two choices. Theoretically, the Leafs could choose to simply cut bait with Kessel, dump the contract and look to start again with other players and other personalities.
Or, they could try to enhance Kessel’s value, and perhaps look to a brighter day when he’ll be a better player for the Leafs or fetch something bigger and better on the trade market.
Which is where Mike Babcock, hockey’s first $50-million coach, comes in.
You could look at the long list of NHL players Babcock has coached and imagine that Kessel might be his greatest individual challenge if both are there for Leaf camp in September. Coming from a franchise where players like Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk provided peer pressure for others to play the same consistent, trustworthy 200-foot game they delivered night after night, Babcock now inherits a Leafs team that had a No. 1 line featuring Kessel that was minus-100 this season.
Maybe, for that reason alone, Kessel has to go despite the fact he’ll be only 28 in October and has averaged 0.41 goals per game as a Leaf (for a comparison, Chicago superstar Patrick Kane has averaged 0.38 goals per game over that time). After all, if you’re going to convince Nazem Kadri, William Nylander and other young forwards to play the game a certain way, you can’t have Kessel doing it his way on his terms.
Randy Carlyle, while coach of the Leafs, used to fret about giving Kessel days off from practice, but his assistants would tell him the upside was that practice would be better and more productive without No. 81. What an indictment that is. The question is whether Babcock, to some the best coach in hockey, can do anything about it. From Moose Jaw to Spokane to Cincinnati to Anaheim to Detroit, he’s had to work with a lot of different personalities. He had Sean Avery and Ilya Bryzgalov in Cincinnati, quirky Sandis Ozolinsh with the Ducks, Todd Bertuzzi with all his baggage and idiosyncratic Dominik Hasek in Detroit.
The difference with Kessel, however, is that he’s not a strong or troublesome personality, but a quiet, passive one, and an athlete who was born so athletically gifted much has come easily to him, including great wealth.
How do you appeal to such a player and person? Maybe you can’t. Winnipeg, to name one team and one player, simply gave up on Evander Kane in exasperation and shipped him off to Buffalo.
If there’s a comparison to the task Kessel presents for Babcock, perhaps it’s the job Ken Hitchcock did with Brett Hull once upon a time in Dallas.
The Golden Brett didn’t score as much for Hitchcock as he did for the St. Louis Blues, but he won more, including a Stanley Cup in 1999. His game evolved dramatically.
“I came in kind of as a free-wheeler. I kind of played my own game,” Hull explained in a 2011 radio interview. “Within the system, I had a theory on what I had to do to get open and create some offence. (But) when I got to Dallas, there was no ad-libbing. We had a game plan, there was a certain way we played and you were going to do it come hell or high water.
“It was a big adjustment for me. But when you see (Mike) Modano and (Joe) Nieuwendyk and (Jere) Lehtinen and (Sergei) Zubov play under that umbrella, it doesn’t take you long to figure out you’re going to do it and enjoy it and enjoy winning. That’s what happened.”
The comparison, obviously, is problematic for two reasons. Kessel isn’t Hull, and the Leafs don’t have an established leadership group that includes the likes of Modano, Nieuwendyk, Lehtonen and Zubov.
At the same time, Hull was 33 and much more set in his ways after 11 seasons in St. Louis than Kessel, who looks more like a lost sheep than a headstrong player determined to march to the beat of his own drum.
Hitchcock, interestingly, said this week he had to change his initial philosophy when he started coaching Hull.
“I went in with the attitude I’m going to get him to conform, and that philosophy didn’t work,” he told The Star.
“When I sat down and started listening to him, I quickly found out I can learn a lot from this guy. I took more from our conversations than he did.
“I allowed the players on the team to hold Brett accountable, and we had a veteran group. But I picked his brain a lot. He’s a scorer, but a very smart player. He knows the quiet places on the ice. How to read defencemen. How to get breakaways.
“I’ve found myself using information I got from him for the rest of my career, things like skill development and how to score.”
Hitchcock, who coached with Babcock at the Olympics, had similar but different experiences in Columbus with another elite scorer, Rick Nash, and offered up one strategy.
“One thing that worked was to put Rick in checking situations,” he said. “We had him killing penalties and playing against the other team’s top line. When that happens, you have no choice but to dig in. We did that with Brett, too.” So it can be done. Trying to do so, you have to believe, is a much better option than selling low. Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Rogers Sportsnet and a regular contributor to Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column will appear here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.
Kessel looks more like a lost sheep than a headstrong player determined to march to the beat of his own drum