DiManno
Woebegone winger wouldn’t fit with Leafs’ new regime,
The voice down the line belonged to Phil Kessel. He was calling from the West Coast — to talk. Could have knocked me over with a feather. But this was Brian Burke’s doing, because at that time he was still the boss of all things Leafian. And BB was piqued that his star acquisition — for whom he’d given up so much, and a lot more than had originally been envisioned when that second first-round draft pick turned into Dougie Hamilton — wasn’t getting the respect which a goal-scoring stud apparently deserved.
They both were in need of a little PR adjustment, actually.
I won’t pretend Kessel had much to say that night. Never has and never will. We both knew it was a forced-march interview. But he was agreeable and generally accommodating. I liked the guy.
Now everyone is someplace else. For his sins, chronically enigmatic Kessel has been transformed into a Pittsburgh Penguin, there to doubtless bask in top line proximity to Sidney Crosby.
For the vast constituency that wanted a whole lot of gone between No. 81 and Toronto, Leafs president Brendan Shanahan has answered your feverish prayers. Be careful what you wish for, maybe.
Suddenly the Leafs are a completely different ball of wax — not so much from the plentiful assets received in return, a stockpile of draft picks and young prospects, but from the subtraction of Phil-the-Un-thrill. It is liberating. Shanahan’s reinvention of the club could not proceed if Kessel remained part of the deplorable mix. The Leafs shed salary and an albatross of a contract. More crucially, they disburdened themselves of a one-trick pony whose goal production was never going to compensate for his shortcomings and character defects.
He lacked something, whatever the innate quality that separates the very good from the grand.
The upside of Kessel could be breathtaking — that throttling speed, the extra gear he’d turn on from the red-line in, leaving pursuers wind-burned; the sniper’s eye and soft hands, except when they went stone-cold, because he was susceptible to serial slumps. It was Kessel who put the team on his shoulders during the one playoff series, against his former Bruins, that the Leafs have experienced in the last decade.
The downside was just as steep: disengaged, unmotivated, out of shape, lazy, last guy on the ice at practice and first guy off.
He was, is, a goal-scoring savant, entirely one-dimensional, and the Leafs could have lived with that if Kessel were not simultaneously at the apex of that much maligned non-leadership cadre, because his phlegmatic nature very much set the tone on the club. Ex-GM Dave Nonis tried to alleviate the problem by bringing in sandpaper players but they were mostly of the spear-carrier ilk or total busts such as David Clarkson. The pith of the team wasn’t significantly altered.
Kessel simply didn’t appear to care that there’s more to the job, his job specifically, than putting up handsome numbers.
There’s hard work, expected even of the gifted, and there’s setting an example for younger teammates. There’s walking the walk and talking the talk — which Kessel was always loath to do.
There was a time when I thought he was paralyzed by shyness but I was wrong. That’s not why he skedaddled from the dressing room after games or projected as excruciatingly pained on the rare occasions he submitted to scrums, monosyllabic and often sarcastic. Not the brightest bulb either, even in an environment — professional sports — where IQ is inconsequential.
Just be brilliant on the ice, and maybe minimally co-operative off it.
Just be brilliant on the ice, and maybe minimally co-operative off it. Kessel couldn’t be bothered
Kessel couldn’t be bothered. Except that one time, at the March trade deadline, when he spontaneously erupted in defence of Dion Phaneuf, launching into a memorable dressing room rant over the media’s treatment of his captain in the wake of a scurrilous tweet that slimed Phaneuf, his wife Elisha Cuthbert and Joffrey Lupul, accidently aired by TSN. In fact, that was arguably Kessel’s finest off-ice hour, demonstrating that he did indeed have a pulse and a modicum of passion.
But Kessel and Phaneuf, in tandem, were also responsible for the nadir moment of a hideous season. It was those two club “leaders” who contrived and compelled the colos- sally tone-deaf escapade that came to be known as Salutegate: Refusing to lift their sticks to the crowd at the Air Canada Centre, as had become traditional after a win, in what was a blatant up-yours to the fans. And then they lied about their intention, claimed it was just a one-off re-set, in an exposition that made zero sense.
The rest of the players had to fall into step, Kessel reminding Cody Franson — for everybody to see — to get that stick down when the since-departed defenceman instinctively started raising his arm.
Such sophomoric behaviour. And why?
Because Kessel and Phaneuf had their noses out of joint over the well-deserved boos and the jersey-tossing from the stands.
Shanahan was appalled. Behind closed dressing room doors he told them so: You made this mess, you figure a way out of it.
The clock on Kessel and/or Phaneuf started ticking that night.
One of them, at the least, had to go, the rot excised from the Leaf marrow.
What this trade bellows is that, even with Mike Babcock now at the helm, Kessel was beyond rehabilitation as a Leaf.
He is un-coachable, as Toronto management figures it, inimical to the corrective ministrations of arguably the best bench commandant in hockey.
Of course, as things so often tend to shake out for Toronto, Kessel might just come back to bite the Leafs in the arse as a Penguin. Maybe he’ll discover an ember of motivation after all, the avenging kind.
I suspect Phil is actually delighted about it.
And for Toronto, the Thrill is gone, babe.