ANAHEIM — There are two Ryan Keslers.
Loosely, they boil down to the one on the ice that you like quite a bit — especially with a Game 7 on tap for Saturday — and the off-ice Ryan Kesler whom the Vancouver Canucks found almost impossible, over the long term, to like much at all.
There is the Kesler who wanted a no-trade clause in his deal when Vancouver was on the way up. And the Kesler who waived it — then gave the Canucks just a single team he would go to — when he saw the window closing in Vancouver.
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: | Broadcast Schedule
Rogers NHL GameCentre LIVE | Stanley Cup Playoffs Fantasy Hockey
New Sportsnet app: iTunes | Google Play
“Wakes up grumpy, comes to the rink grumpy,” surmised Brian Burke this season, when asked why he likes Kesler. But think that through for a moment.
We all want Grumpy Kesler once the game starts. Who doesn’t like a pissed off centreman who does everything: play when you’re protecting a lead; play late in a game when you’re trailing; play on your top power play unit; be one of your top penalty killers? He’ll draw a penalty one shift, then paste Duncan Keith semi-from behind — all good, in these books — as Kesler did in Game 6.
The game lasts only 60 minutes (most nights) however. The grumpy, brooding guy who — the minute it became clear the window was closing in Vancouver — abandoned the project, but only on his own terms…? You get that guy 365 days a year.
In the end, the same qualities that make Kesler desirable on the ice are the same personality traits that, eventually, drove Canucks players and management to want him out of their room. And by then, Kesler liked what was going on in Anaheim anyway, a calculation which was completely accurate.
We asked him on Friday why he narrowed his focused on the Ducks.
“I know this team can win,” he said. “When you get a taste of the Stanley Cup finals and you get that close, you want to be back. I think we all know careers don’t last forever. You only get a kick at the can a couple of times. That’s why.”
Then you get to a moment like this one, a Game 7 that will pit one of the elite second-line centres in the game against his old nemesis, Jonathan Toews, a grudge match that played out for three epic Canucks-Blackhawks series’ and continues in the spring of 2015.
The last guy you’d want up against Toews is a polite, union-buddy kind of centre. Toews may beat you anyhow — he’s that good — but if you don’t bend the rules a tad against him, you don’t stand a chance.
“It’s a challenge,” Kesler said. “He wins some nights, I win some nights. That’s the way it goes when you have that caliber of player you’re trying to defend.”
Kesler won the early parts of this series, while Toews has pulled away in the back end. Now, the two of them become a micro battle within the series deciding game set for Saturday.
“I’ve been in Toews’ shoes many times, many games, and it’s not easy,” said Ryan Getzlaf, the kind of No. 1 centre that Kesler was set upon as a Canuck. “Kes does a great job and he has the offensive threat that makes him even more reliable for us when he can play at both ends of the rink.”
So you wonder, why did a player like this not remain with a Vancouver team that so dearly needs the bite and pedigree that Kesler brings to the roster? How could a team on the build not want to do so with someone who personifies that angry game that Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau wants?
Well, the fact is, Kesler decided that the player the Ducks covet having in their lineup, one win from a berth in the Stanley Cup final, wasn’t going to have the same opportunity if he remained a Canuck. And he’s right — he likely wouldn’t have.
New Canucks GM Jim Benning considered granting Kesler his trade wish, and when Benning asked around the organization he found that Kesler had worn himself out on his teammates, the team staff, pretty much everyone. So he made a difficult deal that he was never going to win, getting Nick Bonino, Luca Sbisa and a first-round pick.
Sports history is littered with teammates who nobody ever called “a great guy,” coveted because of what they brought to the team once the ball was kicked off, or the first pitch was thrown. For the next 24 hours — and perhaps two weeks beyond that — the only qualities that will matter are those that shine under the lights of Sportsnet and NBC.
Kesler was asked on Friday about what will determine the Game 7 winner, whether it will be a bounce or a break of some kind.
“Who wants it more,” he said with typical frankness. “It’s not about X’s and O’s anymore. It’s about who wants it more; who is ready to out-compete the guy across from him.”
If those are the parameters, I’ll have Kesler on my team any day.
