CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- "It's been an interesting year, right?"
Phil Kessel does that all the time. Ends maybe every other sentence with " ... right?" as if he's searching for an answer to something. It's awesome, really. One of his more endearing traits and one of his more revealing. He's kind of like the down-to-earth dude who just plopped down next to you at the bar and is ready to reveal all.
Except that, in this case, there really isn't much to reveal.
The subject I'd just raised, minutes after the Penguins' practice Monday at the Lemieux Sports Complex, was whether or not Kessel was having fun. And he knew instantly what I'd meant. We'd brought this up last summer, on that stunning, stirring July 1 afternoon when he was acquired from the Maple Leafs, when his freedom from hockey hell and his joining Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin was supposed to merge into merriment on all fronts. Not to mention 40 or 50 goals, minimum.
And yet, here we are, at the precise halfway point of the 2015-16 season, and Kessel has been ... OK. He's got 12 goals, which is OK, and 12 assists, which is OK, and he's appeared in every game as always, and he's got only two power-play goals and ... that's about it.
OK isn't nearly enough for a guy whose previous seven seasons saw goal outputs of 36, 30, 32, 37 20, 37 and 25 goals. And that 20 came in a shortened 48-game schedule, which means that his current pace for 24 goals would actually be the worst output of his career.
So yeah, he knew what I meant.
"I am. I really am," Kessel ultimately replied to both my question about having fun and his own trademark follow. "It's definitely been fun. I think we have a good group of guys here. We enjoy being around each other. We work hard, we push each other ... "
I cut him off to mention being impressed by the upbeat tempo and tenor of the practice that was just completed, one in which he was carving up as much ice as anyone.
"Yeah, that was pretty fast-paced, huh? But that's the kind of team we need to be, and that's how you get there. We aren't there yet. We haven't all played as we'd all like. But we're all improving, getting better. There's still half a year left. That's a lot of time. That's how I look at it, right? We'll all get better as a team and be where we want to be."
He's right, right?
At the same time, there's no separating the collective from the individual in this equation. The Penguins have gotten tangibly better under Mike Sullivan, now 5-2-2 after going 0-4 immediately after Mike Johnston's firing. They're looking faster, more together, more disciplined. And not coincidentally, Kessel has looked better, too. He's been more creative, more competitive, more in tune with what's expected at both ends.
No, the fundamental numbers won't show much of a difference ...
... but simply paying attention will.
"I think Phil's looked really good," Crosby said. "He's gotten those wheels going, he's making plays all over the rink, and he's been huge, I think, on the power play."
That's as good a place to start as any in looking at three ways for the Penguins to max out on their Kessel investment in the season's second half:
1. KEEP THE POWER PLAY PLUGGED
The captain's assessment of Kessel's power-play impact might be generous, in light of those two goals, but there's merit to the thought: Kessel has five power-play assists and, for the fullest context, his power-play time was shared with stars who were struggling at levels previously unseen, meaning Crosby and Kris Letang. Both have been far better of late.
Besides, to hear Sullivan tell it, despite Kessel's frequent positioning on the left dot, his role is anything but that of a pure trigger-man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOtxNN15R-c
Never has Kessel been Brett Hull or Alexander Ovechkin over there. He didn't fire off many one-timers in Toronto, either. Rather, his forte was collecting the puck off the left boards and creating his own shot with his quickness of skating and release.
That's still very much the ambition.
"Our power play's run a little different than it was for me in Toronto," Kessel said. "We've got a lot of great players out there, and we want to spread it around. And I think we are. We're getting it going."
No question. Try 11 for 32 -- 34.4 percent -- in the past 10 games.
"What we're doing is we're taking the play that's there, we're using everyone on the ice, and we're moving a lot more," Crosby said, essentially echoing Sullivan's explanation, not at all by accident. It's Sullivan's power play now. "Where we'd get bogged down is not moving at all. We'd get trapped to one side. Now, with the way Geno's moving, the way Tanger is distributing up top, we're getting that motion."
And Kessel?
"Phil's making all the right plays. People don't appreciate what kind of a passer he is, but he offers us a lot out there. He's seeing plays, making them, and still getting his shots."
Phil Kessel, through the first half of the 2015-16 season. -- DKPS