Kessel traded to Penguins
- Thread starter GhostofPotvin29
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mr grieves
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Nik the Trik said:
Oh, well if all you're saying is that the age of the prospect is something they might've found appealing in the trade, sure. I'm sure they looked at several aspects of the deal and found reasons they could live with them. They're all factors.
But most of the evidence suggests that the major factor is that they had an internal deadline to move Kessel, were highly motivated sellers, and didn't want to risk their only partner signing a UFA. So I wonder whether these other factors were justifications they (we?) came to after trading their best asset because they felt they simply had to.
mr grieves
New member
Nik the Trik said:
I don't know. That's really not how I read the reporting and analysis.
Here's a compilation of the reviews:
Mirtle: "Leafs viewed dumping Kessel as essential to their rebuild"
link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/leafs-beat/mirtle-leafs-viewed-dumping-kessel-as-essential-to-their-rebuild/article25224289/
DGB: "Attempting to Make Sense of the Phil Kessel Trade"
link: https://grantland.com/the-triangle/attempting-to-make-sense-of-the-phil-kessel-trade/
Bruce Arthur: "The Phil Kessel Era in Toronto is Over"
link: http://www.thestar.com/sports/leafs/2015/07/01/the-phil-kessel-era-in-toronto-is-over-arthur.html
MLHS: "Rating the Phil Kessel Return"
link: http://mapleleafshotstove.com/2015/07/02/poll-rate-the-phil-kessel-return/
PPP: "Dealing with the Phil Kessel Trade"
link: http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2015/7/2/8884433/dealing-with-the-phil-kessel-trade
B&W Brotherhood: "6 Reasons the Phil Kessel Trade was Bad"
link: http://blueandwhitebrotherhood.blogspot.ca/2015/07/6-reasons-phil-kessel-trade-was-bad.html
Steve-O: "Leafs were sick and tired of Kessel"
link: http://www.torontosun.com/2015/07/01/leafs-were-sick-and-tired-of-kessel
Nik the Trik said:
Who knows, perhaps if we had taken back more contract - say $2M or $2.?M - we would have gotten Matta or Pouliot.
Regardless of whether we were "owned" in the transaction, the fact is that we are rid of a player who loafed (I am being kind here) through the last half season (as did the entire team) and who showed a complete aversion to accepting any kind of leadership and responsibility for his or the team's play. Kessel will do well in Pittsburgh for the reasons we all know, but the fact is that he would not do anywhere near as well in Toronto.
Leaf management was not dealing from a position of strength and given the miasma around last year's roster in general, and Kessel in particular, there was imply no way in hell we could have had him in training camp come September.
His line led the league in the worst +/- and while that is not the only statistical determinant, when taken in conjunction with the last half season refusal to perform (and not the first in that regard) on Kessel's part as well as that of the team, the change for the sake of change just had to be made. There was no other way.
This is no time to stop cleaning house.
Kin
New member
mr grieves said:
You've made it perfectly clear that you've decided not to read things that way but none of the links you've provided in anyway contradict what I said. That the Leafs chose to trade Kessel is obvious by the fact that they traded him. That the return was what is was is inextricably linked to how the rest of the league saw him regardless of the Leafs making that decision. Pittsburgh held the cards not because the Leafs wanted to trade him but rather because nobody else wanted to trade for him despite the fact that they all have access to the same statistical information we do.
The people running hockey teams, believe it or not, aren't so dumb that they can't work out the difference between Kessel's production last season and his season in the three years prior and all it would have taken is for one other team around the league to say "Hey, Kessel's year last year was an aberration, if we trade for him we can add a terrific player" for the Leafs to have had considerably more leverage when negotiating that deal.
But no team did. That was the environment they were living in. That spoke to a deeper truth about Phil Kessel and the way that he's perceived that, believe or or not, really doesn't have that much to do with last year.
Nik the Trik said:
Perhaps, but was potential trading partners revisited with TO now being willing to pay some of his salary. we will never know, was there a rush to move him, would have a more patient and experienced actual GM done it different or better. Phil is the type of player you want if you want to win now and we've all seen teams overpaying UFAs in the hope that they are the players that will get them over the top, overpaying and overterming.
We know that common sense should be prevalent in all organizations but we also know it isn't, there is a price to win the Stanley Cup and common sense isn't always the top priority. Teams constantly mortgage their futures to win now. I think $s was the greatest barrier in the Kessel talks, not talent, not character, not diminishing returns.
Coco-puffs
New member
Nik the Trik said:
My hypothesis is they wanted to get the best young players Pittsburgh has:
Maata
Pouliot
Kapanen
Two goalies (Murray/Jarray)
Harrington
(Ref. http://www.hockeysfuture.com/teams/pittsburgh_penguins/ (Maata has already graduated) & http://www.hockeysfuture.com/teams/toronto_maple_leafs/ (for Kapanen/Harrington)
As I stated, Pittsburgh had Maata and Pouliot in their lineup last year and lost Martin/Erhoff to FA. Losing their top two young players, both defensemen, was an absolute non-starter. The Leafs then went after their next best position players (ie, non-goalies) age not-withstanding. In fact, there are many other 7.0 rated players (equivalent to Harrington) in their system, but with higher risk- probably because they are younger (I didn't check all their ages)- but its Harrington who was part of the trade.
Your hypothesis may be true- its hard to say if the Leafs preferred younger prospects but Pittsburgh insisted on using Harrington in the trade. However, the Leafs seemed to have Harrington in the deal from the start (ie, when Kunitz and Scuderi were part of it), indicating that is who they coveted- one of their older prospects.
Kin
New member
Coco-puffs said:
Well, not that you should invest too heavily in HF rankings but considering the combination of numbers/letter grades they use the only prospect as good as Harrington in the Penguins system besides Pouliot they didn't get was Sundqvist(and, again, we should take these rankings with a pinch of salt).
So there's fair evidence that the Leafs got two of the Penguins top 5 prospects and that Harrington is relatively valuable in his own right(not to mention he becomes, again in these HF rankings, the Leafs most valuable defense prospect).
So Harrington may well have been in the trade since the beginning but I disagree that the Leafs had other options that were A) as valuable and B) younger. Still, like I said above saying that age may have been a factor in who they preferred doesn't mean it's the only factor.
The Leafs may have shot themselves in the foot to some degree, with some of those comments made by Shanahan, Babcock, Horachek and Leiweke. They pretty much let it be known that they were unhappy with Kessel, didn't think he was a good team player, and that they'd be trading him. That doesn't exactly put them in a position of strength, despite recent comments attempting to suggest they might keep Kessel around.
Given all that, I still feel the return for Kessel was acceptable. Could it have been better if some of those comments weren't out there, or if they'd been willing to wait until later in the summer or until the season? Who knows. Anyone watching the Leafs saw Kessel playing no defense, waving his stick hopelessly at opponents as they skated past him, saw him laboring to the bench after every ineffective shift.
Management decided that he had to go, and he went. Don't forget to add the "addition by subtraction" factor when evaluating the trade. The fact that he won't be around to be a bad influence on younger players might be worth a top prospect alone.
Given all that, I still feel the return for Kessel was acceptable. Could it have been better if some of those comments weren't out there, or if they'd been willing to wait until later in the summer or until the season? Who knows. Anyone watching the Leafs saw Kessel playing no defense, waving his stick hopelessly at opponents as they skated past him, saw him laboring to the bench after every ineffective shift.
Management decided that he had to go, and he went. Don't forget to add the "addition by subtraction" factor when evaluating the trade. The fact that he won't be around to be a bad influence on younger players might be worth a top prospect alone.
Kin
New member
Chris said:
The tank went pretty well in the second half of the season in large part because Kessel scored at the equivalent pace of a 14 goal, 39 point player. So either:
A) Kessel would continue to score that way, in which case his value would only continue to drop
B) He'd find his scoring touch and help the team win more games.
So either way...
Coco-puffs
New member
Nik the Trik said:
First of all: Yes, I agree- using HF rankings is entirely "grain of salt" material. But its the only resource I know of that gives organizational rankings (which, btw, haven't been updated since the Draft- Marner isn't on there and either is Dermott)
Second: At the end of the day, you originally stated (pg 24) that YOU (and probably the Leafs) preferred younger assets over more NHL ready ones (like Maata and Pouliot) because the next few years are going to be tough and ugly and you wouldn't want to expose them to that. You thought it would suck to lose Rielly in a few years because of what he's had to deal with here during the tough road ahead.
I somewhat agree with you. Stockpiling a bunch of 18 yr olds with high ceilings and have them take some time to develop while our team transitions from the current core to the younger players, while also gaining some more elite level talent early in the draft over the next few years because we will suck sounds great!
However, I'd still much rather get the sure thing now (Maata or Pouliot) than a bunch of maybe's, and my hypothesis was Leafs management would have preferred that as well- but Pittsburgh said no. Many other posters here were disappointed we didn't get either of them too. Obviously, you weren't upset and ultimately I'm not either. I like the return (and the fact it won't help us much in the short term- Tanknation 2016 all the way)- the only thing I didn't like was retaining salary for 7 years.
Kin
New member
Coco-puffs said:
That's about eight shades more definite than I ever was. All I was really putting out there was that going after younger prospects or prospects who are further away might have some strategic merit. That's not to say I definitely prefer one prospect or the other, for me to have a strong opinion on that I'd have to be a lot more familiar with these guys, just that it might have been their rationale for accepting a package that might have had more depth and less top end.
GhostofPotvin29
New member
http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2015/7/6/8901147/kessel-struggling-with-trade-according-to-daniel-negreanu
:-[ Phil!
:-[ Phil!
mr grieves
New member
Chris said:
I can't wait for Peter Holland to blossom into the elite two-way center that Phil's bad attitude and hot dog binges were keeping him from being.
