Kadri’s emergence should inspire Kessel
His three assists in Wednesday’s win over the Lightning combined with his two goals and an assist in Thursday’s shootout loss in Buffalo put him in the rare company of Mats Sundin and Doug Gilmour. The outburst also vaulted him into eighth among NHL points leaders before Friday night’s games.
While no end of discussion over the previous few seasons has centred on the long list of things Kadri needed to learn, it’s become obvious that he also has much to teach. He’s currently schooling the likes of Phil Kessel, for instance, in how to lead the Maple Leafs in scoring while also contributing to the cause beyond the points chart.
Whether or not Kessel will heed the lesson is another matter. Kessel, who often brings his laid-back off-ice persona onto the playing surface, has shown middling interest in on-ice activities that don’t result in goals or assists.
Currently second on the club in points, Kessel has been the top Leaf scorer for the previous three seasons. In those years, when the club met hard times, they cowered. When they met hard teams, they turtled. It didn’t helpthat Kessel, their most talented player, was also their least committed.
Last year’s Leafs, in particular, offered nothing more than a Kessel-esque shoulder shrug in the face of late-season adversity. But this year’s squad is showing more of propensity to deliver a Kadriesque shoulder check to the chest of hated rivals. The mix of skill and killer instinct is appealing.
“(Kadri) wants to win, and he’s willing to block shots and play the body and also make plays offensively,” Leafs goaltender Ben Scrivens said Friday. “You see some of the hits he’s laid out this year, first with the Marlies and now with the Leafs — he’s a true competitor.”
There’s nothing but effort stopping Kessel from raising his proverbial competition level. And there’d be no better time to make a change than now. This truncated season, after all, could go a long way toward determining his future in Toronto; he’ll be an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2014.
But he’s been abysmal against the Bruins, a measuring stick of success for the Leafs. In 20 games with his former team, Kessel is a minus-20 with three goals and six assists. In Toronto’s two losses to the Bruins this season, he has accounted for zero goals and zero assists. In his past 10 games against the black and yellow, he has one goal. Maybe Kessel will never be passionate. Still, if he showed even a smidgen of Kadri’s moment-seizing joie de vivre, he’d be better (and richer) for it. The Bruins, to be fair, have been a nasty nemesis to every Leaf of late. Last year, they outscored the Leafs 36-10 in six games. Toronto hasn’t beaten them in nearly two calendar years. This year, though, the Leafs like to talk about how much better and deeper and mentally stronger they’ve become. These two games against the Bruins — the second goes Monday in Boston — offer a perfect moment to underline those sentiments with an empirical statement. Said Lupul of the Bruins: “It’s a team we’ve got to start challenging a little bit if we want to take that next step into that level of teams, into the Bostons and Pittsburghs of the world, instead of the Winnipegs and the Islanders.” Kessel knows the context of these matchups. He knows his acquisition in 2009 cost the Leafs the draft picks that became young stars Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton, and that the Bruins won the Cup a season later. He knows Boston will eternally shower him with chants of “Thank You Kessel!” He should also know that Kadri has been buried under a far more daunting pile of negative hype and shaken it off to impressive ends. “He’s just kind of risen above it and not let it bother him, and continued his growth,” Lupul said of Kadri’s early struggle. “(But) it could have ruined him.” Kessel can’t keep allowing the Bruins to ruin him. In the same way that Kadri has come to answer his critics, these next two games against the Bruins would be a fine time for Kessel to conquer his obvious hang-up with the franchise that gave him away. If he can’t, or can’t be bothered, how can the Leafs see him as a long-term piece to next-level success?