PITTSBURGH — It’s a lock: Somewhere in Consol Energy Center on Saturday afternoon, a person in a yellow giveaway T-shirt wondered why Phil Kessel only shows up for playoff games.
Forget that he had 26 goals in the regular season; Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were the only Penguins with more. Forget that he had 59 points; Crosby and Kris Letang had him beat there, and that’s it.
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And, most of all, forget, for a variety reasons, that Kessel’s reputation before the start of this postseason was the exact inverse. People wondered why he shrunk in the playoffs despite sustained regular-season greatness — despite that he did no such thing. In 22 playoff games split between Boston and Toronto before this April, Kessel had 21 points.
Now, after another goal and another assist in Pittsburgh’s 6-3, series-clinching Game 5 win over the Rangers, Kessel is over a point per game in the playoffs for his career.
This is because he’s a good player. Period. Always. Sometimes he’s great, and sometimes there are dry spells — because that’s how hockey works, especially for goal-scorers — but for whatever reason, plenty struggle to understand or appreciate him. He’s a Rorschach painting, in the sense that perception of him, his personality and his game is based largely on whatever baggage the person looking at him carries.
A lot of that is based on how he acts on camera. He’s uncomfortable, with a tendency to stash any joy he feels for either himself or other people who aren’t asking questions or listening to his answers. That’s his prerogative. Still, a Phil Kessel scrum tends not to be easy for anyone involved.
Phil, what about playing for the Penguins, in this situation has helped your game?
“I think I just always kind of play the same way. I don’t change too much.”
Is there less pressure here?
“Obviously we got a lot of great players here, so I don’t know if there’s ever less pressure anywhere you go.”
It’s got to be fun playing with Crosby, Malkin and Letang on the power play, right?
“Obviously they’re great players, so when I get a chance to play with them it’s a lot of fun and we got a great team here.”
How good does it feel to be back in the playoffs again? It’s been a few years.
“Obviously, it’s a good feeling. This is the best time of year. Right now, we’re playing well and getting wins.”
That’s a sample, and it says, effectively, nothing. He’d just advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since his third year in the league, and he looked and sounded like he’d just played a 2-1 snoozer against the Devils on a Tuesday in February. The only obligation he has in this spot, though, is to stop short of assaulting the people asking the questions, physically or verbally. He’s fairly spotless in that regard, so it’s not a problem.
The point is that, if you’re looking for answers from the hockey equivalent of a dog whistle, you’re not going to find them. Is that a shame? Not really, and it’s also far from his fault; his situation in Toronto, by the end, as the avatar for a franchise that had become a tractor trailer careening into a gorge, was impossible. Blame him for not helping himself, maybe, but there wasn’t much help to give.
He wasn’t physical or quotable; if that’s something that matters to you A) it really shouldn’t and B) it’s tough to imagine any player who was simultaneously less of both. He was just great at scoring goals and being the best part of a terrible team. Now, he’s here, somehow, still not physical, still not quotable, but a vital and complementary piece on a team with real Stanley Cup potential. Letang was asked about Kessel’s fit, and he brought up the Kings, who, after adding a similar player, had won the Stanley Cup in two of the past four years.
“I look at a guy like (Marian Gaborik), he’s not a hard-nose guy,” Letang said. “He’s not a guy who’s going to come out with big hits and stuff like that, but he’s going to score those big goals. Phil scored a big goal for us tonight again and that’s the type of player he is. He’s a clutch guy when you need a goal and he’ll get it.”
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In the first period, Pittsburgh needed it. Streaking down the right wing on the power play, Kessel beat Henrik Lundqvist with the wrister that deflected off Lundqvist’s own stick and into the net to tie the game at 2. It was the platonic ideal of a Phil Kessel goal, and we’ve seen it plenty of times.
“He can change a game with one shot,” Crosby said.
Since the start of March, he’s done that more often; in the last full month of the regular season, playing more often with center Nick Bonino and left wing Carl Hagelin, Kessel scored six goals — he'd had four in every month but November, when he had three — and totaled 10 assists after not having a month with more than six.
“You can see the impact he has on our team,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “He's one of those guys that can be a difference-maker and he has been that for us throughout the course of the last eight weeks of our season. He's an important guy for this team and when he plays with the determination he's showing right now, he makes (us) better."
For a player whose career has been so greatly defined by perception, that's one important bit of reality. In the end, not much else matters.