After years of rumors -- and one deal that fell through thanks his own veto -- Phil Kessel has finally been traded. He will make his new home with the Coyotes, as they acquire the 31-year-old, two-time Stanley Cup champ, reuniting him with former Penguins assistant coach Rick Tocchet.
Coyotes get: RW Phil Kessel, D Dane Birks, 2021 fourth-round pick
Penguins get: C Alex Galchenyuk, D Pierre-Olivier Joseph
Arizona Coyotes: A-
When I spoke with Coyotes general manager John Chayka at the NHL draft, it was pretty clear what his offseason plan of attack was: Get more scoring in his forward group, and target teams in salary-cap trouble to find it.
"Yeah, we'd like to score some more goals next year. That would be pretty good," Chayka told me. "Ultimately, teams that are over the cap have to get under. If there's an opportunity to add to our group, we will."
Hence, the Phil Kessel trade.
Kessel makes $6.8 million against the cap through 2022, but Alex Galchenyuk's $4.9 million this season that the Coyotes just shipped out to Pittsburgh makes up a chunk of that. They are a team that can take the full hit now and in the coming years.
(Don't look now, but the Coyotes are the ones staring at the cap ceiling, with $1,711,432 million in free space, although they'll get salary-cap relief when the Marian Hossa contract gets put on long-term injured reserve this season.)
Simply put, the Coyotes needed a player like Kessel. They averaged 2.55 goals per game last season, which was fourth from the bottom in the NHL. Their power play was 26th in the league at 16.3 percent. These were symptomatic of the largest offensive issue for Arizona: a lack of pure finishers. The Coyotes' 8.3 shooting percentage was 0.1 percentage points from being the worst in the NHL last season. Remember, this was a team that was in the hunt for a playoff spot until nearly the end of the regular season despite those offensive woes.
Kessel, meanwhile, has had a shooting percentage north of 10.0 in each of the past three seasons, has scored more than 23 goals in each of the past six seasons and had 36 power-play points in 2018-19.
Of course, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are still back in Pittsburgh, so matching some of that offensive output will be difficult. But Kessel is not simply a product of the talent around him. Kessel can still drive a line, and when you look at the collection of young centers on the roster, the Coyotes are going to need that.
The worst aspect of this trade is Kessel's age. He will be 32 when the season starts and 34 in the final year of this deal. He is one of the NHL's most durable players, having played every regular-season game since 2010. The flip side of that is that Kessel has flat-out played a lot of hockey, and despite his deification from fans, he's still only human, and the body does what it does.
The best aspect of this trade for the Coyotes might be his reunion with head coach Rick Tocchet, for whom Kessel played his best hockey in Pittsburgh when Tocchet was there as an assistant coach -- earning the nickname "The Phil Whisperer."
There wasn't a player like Kessel available to the Coyotes on the free-agent market. While one might have wanted a bit of a younger talent in giving up Galchenyuk, Kessel checks many of the boxes for the Coyotes as a team on the cusp of a playoff berth. And it's a big statement from new owner Alex Meruelo.
"I don't remember the last time we had a player of this caliber on this team," Chayka said.
Pittsburgh Penguins: B-
The marriage between Kessel and the Penguins provided some lasting memories, namely the back-to-back Stanley Cups for which he played a major role. (And frankly, Kessel should have won the Conn Smythe Trophy for his effort in 2016.) But heading into this season, it was clear this marriage had reached its end, for a few reasons.
One was financial. Kessel makes $6.8 million against the cap for the next three seasons. The Penguins had just over $3.1 million in salary-cap breathing room before the trade, still needing to beef up their defensive corps. Now, they have more than $5 million in cap space. And in Galchenyuk, they have a player who is seven years younger than Kessel, with an expiring contract -- although not even in the conversation with Kessel as an accomplished, consistent NHL scorer.
Whatever plans the Penguins had for remaking their roster around Crosby and Malkin, the first step this offseason was offloading Kessel. GM Jim Rutherford attempted it once, but Kessel stamped out a deal to the Minnesota Wild that would have brought Jason Zucker to Pittsburgh and would have gotten rid of defenseman Jack Johnson -- and his $3.25 million cap hit through 2023 -- in the process. But a trade to Arizona seemed to work. The problem was that Arizona knew this, so Rutherford waited it out until Pierre-Olivier Joseph, a first-round pick in 2017 who had been playing in the QMJHL, was added to the pot.
But the other reason Kessel had to go takes us to the world of rumor and innuendo. There always had been speculation of strife behind the scenes with Kessel, and those whispers got louder once Tocchet, the buffer, left the team. Rob Rossi of The Athletic recently painted a picture of coach Mike Sullivan being flabbergasted by Kessel's refusal to play anywhere but in the Penguins' top six, despite the fact that his play on their third line helped the Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cups. And that was in addition to other issues.
As a source told Rossi: "When you are winning, the things a player like that does can be tolerated. When you stop winning Cups, or when you get embarrassed like they did in the playoffs, you can't deal with a player like that and the things he does."
So off goes Kessel.
It's a bit hard to properly grade this trade until we see what the Penguins are going to do with this cap flexibility. But here's what we know: They're younger with Galchenyuk, who hit 30 goals once (2015-16, with the Montreal Canadiens) but hasn't come close since. They're not immediately better without Kessel on the ice, as a point-per-game performer. We're obviously not privy to all that happened behind the scenes.
Overall, this is a trade that feels like it had to be made. It's a shame that Minnesota wasn't on Kessel's list of approved trade destinations.