Kessel could be 50-goal scorer riding shotgun with Sid, Malkin

Slim pickings: GMs dip into shallow free agent pool

The Toronto Maple Leafs finally found Phil Kessel a centre. Well, two of them, actually. By sending Kessel to the Pittsburgh Penguins in a free agency-trumping six-player trade, one of the most talented scorers in the NHL will now be receiving passes from either Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin.

It is huge upgrade for a winger whose failings in Toronto always came attached with an asterisk. After all, what could you reasonably expect from someone who had to play alongside Tyler Bozak? That excuse, along with many others, no longer applies.

If Kessel cannot score 50 goals while riding shotgun on a line with Crosby or Malkin, expect the same old criticisms regarding his laziness, fitness level and attitude to once again rise to the surface.

At the same time, if he succeeds and wins a Stanley Cup, you can also expect those “thank you Kessel!” chants that the Leafs heard every time they played in Boston to catch on in Pittsburgh.

Either way, July 1 is a date hockey fans will remember for a while.

With a free agent crop that was headlined by second-pairing defencemen, third-line wingers and past-their-prime veterans, the start of free agency was not supposed to be a typically big day on the calendar. But we should have known better.

The Chicago Blackhawks started it all a day early when they made their annual post-Cup purge and sent Brandon Saad, as well as two prospects, to the Columbus Blue Jackets for Artem Anisimov, prospect Marko Dano and a pair of spare parts. It was an unexpectedly expected move by general manager Stan Bowman, who had to clear cap space to sign pending free agents, but instead took out two birds with one stone and traded a 22-yearold budding star forward who was asking for a raise.

While Chicago got a little worse, others got significantly little better — on paper, that is.

Prices for defencemen were steep: Edmonton signed Andrej Sekera to a six-year contract worth $33 million US; Detroit signed Mike Green for three years, $18 million US; and Colorado signed Francois Beauchemin for three years, $13.5 million US.

But it was Leafs president Brendan Shanahan, who a few days earlier predicted that “we won’t be shaking the hockey world,” who ended up causing the biggest tremors.

The trade — which involved the Leafs retaining $1.2 million US annually in salary and also sending a second-round pick (originally acquired from Pittsburgh) to the Penguins in exchange for forward Nick Spaling, 2014 firstround winger Kasperi Kapanen, defence prospect Scott Harrington, as well as a first-round pick in 2016 and a third-round pick in 2017 — sent huge messages to the respective franchises.