Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are California-bound later this month for the NHL's All-Star Game, but they'll leave behind Phil Kessel, the man who just might be most responsible for reigniting both their careers.
That might sound like overstatement, but stay with me.
Any scoring superstar throughout hockey history, from Mario Lemieux on down, has feasted on the power play. Not just for points but also for confidence. The feel of the puck going in the net, no matter how many extra men on the ice, comes with its own value. It carries over to five-on-five. It carries over to teammates.
And don't overthink the pivotal point in this process: Crosby was scoring one power-play goal every 9.03 games in the four seasons before Kessel's arrival in the summer of 2015, and he's now scoring once every 6.23 games. Malkin was scoring once every 7.91 games in the four seasons before Kessel's arrival, and he's now scoring once every 4.57 games:
That's some seriously transformational stuff.
And the most stirring aspect is that, contrary to what pretty much everyone expected at the time of the trade, the difference has not been Kessel bringing to the power play that long-needed right-handed shot from the left circle.
Nope. It's been about the pass.
"Phil is so much a better playmaker than I think people maybe realize," Trevor Daley was telling me over the weekend. "When you think of Phil, you think of all his speed, what he can create off the rush and that big wrist shot. But the thing I think we might appreciate the most is how well he moves the puck."
Appreciating all that statistically first: Kessel's 16 power-play points lead the Penguins and rank seventh in the NHL. Those include four goals and 12 assists, the latter tied for fifth in the league. And get this: He's been charged with only three power-play giveaways all season, a remarkable figure in the context that Crosby has 11, Malkin 10 and most of the rest of the NHL's elite power-play guys are right in that same range.
The No. 1 reason for all of this, of course, is that Kessel's a threat to score from anywhere inside the blue line, as he shows again and again. Goaltenders know that, defensemen know that, and all have to adjust accordingly.
Beyond that, though, it's a spectacular smorgasbord of gifts.
That's a beauty from a couple of weeks ago against the Rangers. That's Kessel bringing the puck up ice. Nothing is more important with the man-advantage. You go back over the franchise's great power plays, even pre-Lemieux, and there always was that one guy who could bring it up ice. In more recent years, that was Alexei Kovalev, Sergei Gonchar and, with the current group, Crosby, Malkin and Kris Letang.
Kessel isn't the first option, but he's still silky smooth when called upon. On the sequence above, the New York penalty-killers are way too passive in conceding the blue line. But that's at least partially due to Kessel coming with speed, as well as all the other options around him. The Rangers don't want to get beat, so they're on their heels. Kessel not only gains the zone but also capitalizes on the flat-footed Jesper Fast and Oscar Lindberg to stickhandle through them before Chris Kunitz and Malkin finish the job.
If you want a good chuckle, follow poor Nos. 19 and 24 up there. That's Fast and Lindberg. They look like they just stumbled off the Thunderbolt after a drinking binge.
Kessel's passes come in all shapes and sizes:
Up there is the softy he sent into Malkin's wheelhouse for the overtime blast to beat the Canadiens just before the bye week. Don't underestimate the difficulty factor there. It takes a ton of practice, awareness and respect to know how every teammate wants the puck in that situation.
And then there are the bullets:
That was from Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final, of course, and it might be the most under-appreciated huge goal of the entire tournament, one that put the Sharks into cardiac arrest.
So let's appreciate it a little more: No. 44 for San Jose there is Marc-Edouard Vlasic, and he's a stud. Not many things in hockey are tougher than making the Canadian Olympic team on defense, but he made it to Sochi and was a mainstay. And yet, watch how Kessel waits and waits for the precious couple of inches that open between Vlasic's stick and left skate. Even with Matt Nieto drifting back to apply additional pressure, Kessel never takes his eye off that hole.
I'm going to reemphasize that because it's critical: Kessel watches the hole, not Malkin at the far lip of the crease. All great passers do this. They don't stare down the target. They make sure the puck gets through. Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Joe Thornton, Adam Oates and all the great passers of the past quarter-century do this.
Kessel reads penalty-killing sticks as if he's a step ahead. Here's another one from the Final, this from Game 5:
Yeah, that's Vlasic again. Peter DeBoer thought so much of Kessel's playmaking that he had his best defensive player focused on shutting down the left wall. He has no chance. Because once Kessel collects the puck in the left corner, he deftly backpedals to a safe spot, lures Vlasic's stick with him but — and this is the best part — he knows a passing lane is about to come open because he knows Vlasic can't stray too far outside the San Jose box.
Kunitz smartly takes one stride toward the net, Vlasic responds, and Kessel goes tape-to-tape to Malkin for the goal.
If I told you who that pass reminds me of ... well, I'm guessing you thought the same.
This is a blast. Let's do some more.
I've mentioned skating on a couple of these, and that's got to be underscored. Everyone knows Kessel is exceptionally fast, but that doesn't just apply on the rush:
This was from last month in Newark. Kessel opens up at the right point because ... hey, why not? He reads Devante Smith-Pelly's stick before making an otherwise dangerous lateral pass to Letang, and Letang gives it right back. Kessel makes his move to the Devils net, makes a slight cut to the inside — watch for it — and completely freezes Vern Fiddler, a forward, and John Moore, a defenseman. Fiddler, wearing No. 38, had no business freezing, and the Devils' collapse is underway.
Kessel's role in the actual goal is done once he goes low to Malkin, but notice how Kessel never stops. Even as Crosby has made up his mind to go back to Malkin for the one-timer, Kessel is motioning with his stick for the captain to give it to him down low.
Power plays are all about constantly creating options for your teammates. If Crosby didn't like what he saw at the net, he had somewhere else to go.
I might like these last two the best, even if they're the dullest on the surface:
Big whoop, right?
On these two power-play goals, both from last month in Tampa, Kessel sees Malkin and Crosby and feeds them for one-timers. Stuff you'd see a half-dozen times a night around the NHL. They're good passes, nice reads off the sticks of the Lightning's top two defensemen, Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman, but basically nothing special.
Except for one thing: On each play, the Penguins' stars are fairly well covered. And I can promise you that at least 81 percent of the league's power-play forwards don't even try those passes because they fear the turnover more than they embrace the concept of getting the puck to your best guys.
Do. Not. Underestimate. This.
In all those dry power-play winters before Kessel, the primary problem of the Penguins -- maybe as a whole -- was that no one was setting up their two best guys in shooting areas. Some of us, myself included, blamed the stars themselves for not going to scoring areas, and that was fair. But it's human nature not going to those areas if you don't think a pass is coming your way.
Watch Crosby on that second one up there. He's the one who swats Brian Boyle's stick out of the path of that pass before it arrives. Kessel hasn't yet released the puck. That's a brilliant play, but brilliance is what's expected of great players.
And it takes a great player to understand that.
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