Phil Kessel’s return with Stanley Cup was all class
The Leafs will break your heart. If it’s not a story quite as old as the city, it’s certainly one that’s older than me, passed down through generations as a self-evident truth.
They will break your heart, on the ice and off, if you let them.
The first time the Leafs broke my son Colum’s heart was at the end of their only playoff appearance in his lifetime. Phil Kessel led a young squad into an unexpected playoff appearance in a lockout-shortened season. In the first round against Boston, they quickly fell to a 3-1 deficit in the best-of-seven series. Everyone knew they were done. My son, seven years old and still new to both the world and to Leafs fandom, was confident they would win.
And they did win, in game five. And then in game six. And in game seven, they built up a 4-1 lead on third period goals by Kessel and Nazem Kadri. Colum, allowed to stay up late to watch, was jumping up and down on the couch, his unwavering belief just over 10 minutes away from vindication.
And then they lost. It was a collapse so momentous Colum’s grandchildren will probably still talk about it. When Boston scored in overtime to end the Leafs’ season, the tears were immediate. And lasting. Colum cried big rivers in face-twisting sobs and full-throated wails that heaved his belly.
I held him, in his bed, for more than two hours while the sadness poured out, telling him, “I know, son, I know.”
The Leafs broke his heart again last year, on Canada Day, when they traded Phil Kessel to the Pittsburgh Penguins. When I broke the news at dinner that day, his face twisted up again as he tried to keep eating for a minute, and then the tears came. He had to leave the room. “Why do that?” He asked. “Why trade the best player?” He dug out his Kessel hockey card and opened his Leaf’s scrapbook to stare at the place where he’d written the name of number 81 as his favourite player.
Elsewhere in the city, many Leafs fans and apparent experts were celebrating loudly to see the back of the best player to step on the ice for this team in a long, long time. Management sure seemed in a hurry to get rid of him.
That’s a Leafs story generations old, of course. When I was a child, the best Leaf of that era, Darryl Sittler, was drummed out of town in bitterness by an incompetent owner. The same owner who had previously forced out and screwed over Dave Keon, the best player of the Leaf’s final championship era.
Before that, Frank Mahovlich, another winger, who fans and coaches were convinced didn’t work hard enough despite his all-star results, was often booed by fans before he was sent packing.
Today, there are statues of Sittler and Keon outside the Air Canada Centre. Mahovlich is honoured with a banner hanging over the ice.
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone and so on.
Kessel, we were all reminded this week, went to Pittsburgh and immediately won a Stanley Cup with the Penguins — not only won, but was their leading scorer in the playoffs. Every longtime Leafs fan knew in their heart this was destined to happen the moment the trade was announced.
To many, the idea that he would return to visit Toronto with the Cup seemed like a joke. Like an ex-girlfriend showing up at your parents’ house to show off her new engage- ment ring. “Troll god,” he was called by one Leafs’ fan website when the idea was announced. He was coming back to rub our faces in it, it seemed.
And yet. And yet. Maybe a city that so often underestimated him as a player when he was here was also underestimating his motives now. He has a lot of friends here, he has said. He will miss us, he has said. He will always consider Toronto home, he has said.
And he still has a lot of fans here, my son would say, if you asked him.
During Kessel’s low-key day in Toronto, he took the Cup to Sick Kids Hospital, which posted pictures of children posing with Kessel and The Trophy. The joy on the faces of the star and fans alike shone brighter than the polished silver of the Cup. That didn’t look like trolling. It looked like a celebration. Like class, as Star reporter Kevin McGran noted.
He couldn’t win us a Cup in six years here, and bring us the unimaginable joy that would come with it. But he did bring us the Cup after he won it, not to rub it in, but to let us, some of us, for a moment, share in his joy.
I showed Colum the photos of Kessel and the sick children and the Stanley Cup, and asked him about it. He screwed up his face a bit, and then smiled. He was still, a year later, upset Kessel had been traded. But he was happy for him, and thought it was nice he’d brought the cup back here for a day. Thought it was nice for those kids, especially.
Kessel was, and is, a great player, one of the best I’ve ever seen play with the Leafs. Seems like he’s a great guy, too.
The Leafs will break your heart. But sometimes, some Leafs, and some former Leafs, will melt your heart, too. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire