SAN JOSE—Not so long ago Phil Kessel was an elite offensive player who stood out rather dramatically on a very weak hockey club.
These days, Kessel is an elite offensive player sticking out rather dramatically in the midst of a rather forgettable Stanley Cup Final.
And that’s the Kessel story. He always stands out, always does his thing.
It’s the environment around him, the situation, the players who he plays with, that change.
The reality is not much has changed about the speedy right winger with the fast hands over the past decade since he came to the NHL out of the University of Minnesota. The Boston Bruins loved him, then fell out of love. Ditto for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Both clubs, for different reasons, chose to move him for future considerations.
Kessel was a young player with a proven ability to score in a league where it’s next to impossible to score, but the Bruins and Leafs preferred the uncertainty of draft picks and prospects to the certainty of his scoring talent.
The Pittsburgh Penguins, as we now know, acquired Kessel for just that talent, believed he could be a difference maker with their group under their circumstances. After a bumpy few months, that has turned out to be the case, and it was certainly the case in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final Monday night when the Pens all but finished off the San Jose Sharks with a workmanlike 3-1 win.
This, ladies and gentlemen, has not been a glorious Cup Final. There were storylines galore coming in, but only Sidney Crosby’s orchestrated overtime play in Game 2 and Logan Couture’s subsequent accusations of “cheating” have generated much in terms of intrigue during the series itself.
Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan called it the “hardest hockey I’ve seen since I’ve been in this business,” and that’s about right. The hockey has been hard. A smart aleck might say sometimes hard to watch.
For four games, the Penguins have outplayed and outskated the Sharks, either by a little or a lot, and this series could have been over by now if not for Joonas Donskoi’s seeing eye OT winner in Game 3. There have been bursts of energy, but in general, the play has been pedestrian and unimaginative, hardly anything to remember.
The Sharks have been a massive disappointment, behind in every game, unable to generate a consistent attack, nothing like the team that knocked off St. Louis in the Western Conference final.
“We’ve been chasing the game the whole series,” lamented head coach Peter DeBoer.
The City of Pittsburgh, which hasn’t hosted a championship victory by a home team in 56 years, couldn’t care less about the Sharks’ problems or the overall quality of the series, needless to say. It’s getting ready for a big party if this series can end at the Consol Energy Centre on Thursday night.
Kessel, meanwhile, accomplished more in Game 4 than San Jose’s big guns – Joe Pavelski, Joe Thornton, Brent Burns – have accomplished the entire series.
“You take the pass, make the read, try to make the play,” said a frustrated Pavelski, San Jose’s captain. “Then it’s not there when you’re trying to pull the trigger.”
Kessel didn’t have that problem in Game 4. He made decisive, important plays. In the first period, he took a pass from Evgeni Malkin moving with speed through the neutral zone, pulled wide on Sharks defender Brenden Dillon and fired a hard shot that San Jose goalie Martin Jones stopped, but couldn’t control. The rebound flew out hard into the slot to Jones’s right and right on to the stick of Ian Cole, who buried the puck for a 1-0 Pittsburgh lead.
In the second, with Melker Karlsson off for interference, Kessel gathered the puck on top of the left circle and moved towards the net. He’s always been known more for his shot than his passes, but he’s an outstanding passer, and showed it on this play.
Malkin, goalless in the final, was standing at the far post. Kessel threaded the needle with a hard, flat pass, and all the Russian centre had to do was angle his stick and chip it into the San Jose net to make it 2-0.
In the building watching all of this was Auston Matthews, invited by the league to the Cup Final along with other top draft prospects Alexander Nylander, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Patrik Laine and Matthew Tkachuk. Matthews is expected to be the top pick of the draft by the Leafs, and even if the other elements of that trade last June – including Pittsburgh’s first round pick at this month’s draft – never pan out for Toronto, it’s undoubtedly true that the Leafs hadn’t moved Kessel, they may well not have finished last and landed Matthews.
It’s not a direct connection, not the same as existed between Tyler Seguin and Kessel, but it’s a clear one. So while Kessel celebrates both his personal success in a championship final and the fact he’s 60 minutes away from owning a Cup ring, so too are the Leafs celebrating the beginning of a new era with the kind of franchise player they’ve rarely owned.
Both teams got what they were after.
For now, of course, Kessel wins the most. The player who was dissed by his NHLPA colleagues once at an all-star draft, the player Team U.S.A. snubbed just last month when the last selections for the World Cup were announced, may become the player who gets to hoist the Cup.
Perhaps he’ll invite Alex Ovechkin to take a picture of that.
Kessel becomes the player who fit perfectly. The right player in the right place at the right time.
“Phil’s made a complete commitment to this team,” said Sullivan. “He’s been one terrific player for us.”
Phil Kessel becomes the 11th player in #Pens history to record 20+ points in a single postseason
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) June 7, 2016
Kessel didn’t have much to say afterwards, as is usually the case, but he was beaming, a big smile hidden behind a playoff beard dwarfed by Thornton’s, but considerable in it’s own right. He seems comfortable and relaxed, things he never seem to be in Toronto.
“You never imagine something like this,” he said when asked about the path he’s travelled from being traded by the Leafs to being on the verge of a championship in Pittsburgh.
“To be one game away from winning is pretty special. We’ll just have to play a real good game.”
Has he been the star of this final, and will he win the Conn Smythe? Possibly. Malkin was outstanding last night, his best game. Olli Maatta was terrific, and has been in the absence of injured Trevor Daley.
Crosby has been gritty and dependable for the entire playoffs. Goalie Matt Murray hasn’t had to be like Ken Dryden was in 1971, but he’s come off the depth chart to play commendably and sometimes superbly, he’s hung in there and, on five occasions after he’s lost, he’s come back to win the next game.
Somewhere in that mix, surely, is Kessel. He’s got 21 points in 22 games, and has proven his style of hockey can be part of a winning team effort when he’s deployed in a certain way.
In the midst of a Cup Final defined by “hard” hockey, he’s found a way to succeed.
