Kessel holds key to GM’s legacy
No truth — absolutely none — to this story that the Toronto Maple Leafs had no choice but to trade Phil Kessel because they could no longer afford both his $8 million salary and the extra baggage fees the airlines were charging to get him from one NHL city to the next.
Maybe you’ve heard Kessel comes with a lot of baggage, the contemporary working term for off-field or off-ice issues, but that doesn’t mean much unless it comes with some specifics.
Does the newest Penguin and the centerpiece of the convulsive nine-player trade Wednesday with the Maple Leafs come with the kind of carrier-approved baggage that fits easily in the overhead bin or safely under the seat in front of you, metaphorically speaking, or is it of the oversized,
out of his possession and possibly augmented by materials from persons not known to him?
“I don’t have any concerns,” said Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford in a Fifth Avenue bunker hours after he’d acquired the one goal-scorer in the trade market he coveted above all others.
“Everybody gets a fresh start in a new place. You always hear stories about different people in different situations, but I feel very comfortable with getting Phil.
“I’ve done a lot of homework on this and I’ve talked to a lot of people. I do believe that getting a fresh start, getting out of Toronto, where he went under the microscope from day one, he was always the guy, the guy that got blamed when things weren’t going well, and he doesn’t have to be the guy here. We have a bunch of them.”
So that’s the working premise for the trade that likely will define Rutherford’s tenure, that the marvelously talented Kessel, a classical NHL blend of speed and snipery, quickly will observe that there’s no smoking on the Penguins bench, and no yawning either, and perhaps discover that a recommitment to conditioning could make his future so much brighter than his recent past.
Additionally, this might be a good place to mention that the Penguins tend to frown on fights at practice, like the one Kessel got into with teammate David Booth in March, but, in truth, they’re not sticklers about it (see Malkin v. Adams, Jan. 2 of the same year).
It was Boston Bruins coach Claude Julien who bought Kessel his first satchel, mentioning not too long after the Bruins made Kessel the fifth player taken in the draft that the young Wisconsinite’s interest in defense wasn’t terribly robust and that neither was he particularly overtrained.
That didn’t stop the Maple Leafs from acquiring Kessel for three draft picks, one of which turned out to be named Tyler Seguin, and then signing him first to a five-year deal that averaged $5.4 million, then to an eightyear extension that averaged $8 million. Thus the microscope. But on Rutherford’s team, Kessel will be just one of the five guys who happen to be eating half the cap space (the Penguins will be responsible for a reported $6.75 million annually), so the drop in pressure should be invigorating.
Skating on the right wing next to Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin should make Kessel a 30-goal scorer again or even a 40-goal man, and, if that happens and it accompanies a Penguins return to postseason relevance, July 1, 2015, will write itself into the better history of the franchise.
If that doesn’t happen, Rutherford might be skewered for overpayment, although the package the Penguins sent Toronto isn’t all that attractive from this view, particularly since Rutherford sealed it without including coveted defenseman Derrick Pouliot.
Essentially, Rutherford got a whole lot of something for a whole lot of maybe, if not a whole lot of nothin’.
The unspoken truth is that Wednesday’s trade will live or die on what Rutherford’s more conspicuous superstars demand of Kessel, if anything. Universally described as a highly useful component in a franchise’s machinery rather than a born leader, Kessel doesn’t necessarily suffer in comparison to Crosby and Malkin on that count.
Sid and Geno are ostensible leaders around here, and not a lot more.
Naturally, the franchise would disagree.
“Sid’s the captain of our team; he’s the leader of our team,” Rutherford said. “On top of that, from the first day that I got here [last spring] to this offseason, I really feel strong about how Sid has taken that role as captain and leader and about where he’d like to see this team go.”
With Kessel aboard and Sid and Geno in their primes, the reasons are far fewer today as to why the Penguins can’t go and play hockey into June of 2016.
But like the airlines, they’ll probably continue to insist on less baggage.