I'm just curious for your reasons, you don't have to defend your opinion if you don't want to. It's perfectly acceptable to like a player and to not like a player, I'm not coming at you specifically for disliking him.
no - and i'm sorry if i made it seem like that, it was a general "you" and a general observation. i find if you're overly critical or you just don't like someone, it's like how dare you, like
@Kyle92 says he hates the player, and the comeback is all "well says a lot about you as a person." (or the gist of that phrasing anyway). like why?
anyhoo. i've written why so many times I don't want to go into too much detail - but basically the final year here really soured me on him. like the whole aspect of it. i've been honest, and like I hated
everyone during the Bad Year). had he stayed like Dion, I probably would have gotten over it, but meh. (I mean there's more to it than that and if you really wanna know, you can send me a PM and i can go more into depth). but that's basically the crux.
When did the management staff in place say they didn't want any part of him!? To me, you had to trade Kessel to start the rebuild. I love Kessel but if we didn't trade him that year, I would've hated this management (Rebuilds are useless if you don't trade your elite players; Matthews, Kapanen, Andersen were indirect results of that Kessel trade). IMO the management would love to have Kessel back.
in little ways. (again, i've written this so many times, but i'll sum it up).
Shanahan gets hired, and a few months - really"nothing" line at the end of the article (at the time) but he basically says that he talked to everyone during exit meetings about how he expected things to be
and the way people come to camp will say a lot to him about who truly wants to be a maple leaf. The whole Feschuk article blows up, and I don't think that really did Phil any favours at all. then the whole year happened and there were more talks about the direction they were going to go, etc. Then Babcock comes and he's talking to Phil, Dion, Lupul and Bernier, basically the leadership corps, several times between when he got hired and draft. All of a sudden Dion's trade rumours die down but Phil's ramp up. then Phil is gone.
now. i have stated many times i have zero glitches with the trade (at all)
and i've made the argument that if we keep Phil, we don't finish dead last.
however i've also always said is that I personally feel that the Leafs were comfortable in their drafting that they could finish in the top five and be happy. (and while we don't have Matthews, we can get someone solid (and arguably, this year would have been our really painful year and maybe we draft Dahlin. that's a lot of shoulda coulda woulda i know). but they were prepared to keep a huge chunk of impactful players, so keeping Kessel really wouldn't have made that much of a difference, then just do a major sale when they did (early feb). Like remember. a big part of why we were last, was because
everyone was either hurt, or simply forgot how to score by the beginning of January. we were really lucky to be dead last.
That's a perfectly reasonable opinion. But I disagree with you and your 2nd paragraph. Is it a coincidence that Kessel plays his best when his team is not garbage? Bergeron/Savard/Lucic/Horton/Chara/Thomas/etc in Boston, Crosby/Malkin/Guentzal/Sheary/Letang/Murray/etc in Pittsburgh vs ... JVR/Bozak/Kadri/Phaneuf/Reimer in Toronto?
Would P.Kane or A.Ovechkin be considered 'that type of player' if they had to carry a team featuring JVR/Bozak/Kadri/Phaneuf/Reimer as the main players versus Toews/Hossa/Saad/Sharp/Keith/Seabrook/Hjarmlsson/Campbell/Crawford/etc & Backstrom/Kuznestov/Oshie/Carlson/Niskanen/Holtby?
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I've never said that Kessel never played his best (here), he did. actually he's had better years here than in Pittsburgh (though I
think he had a career year for assists? i dunno). no matter where he was he was always a great playoff performer and I never denied him that either. My argument is that he's not the principle player. at all. he wasn't in Boston (where he had issues and they were a lot better and a lot more structured than we were). He was forced (stupidly by Burke) into being one, and in Pittsburgh he's not. he'll never be and I think that's the type of player he is. and I don't even think it's a bad thing or an insult, though i know a lot of people tend to take it as such. And if he's available because he's still having issues with coaching or whatever... well. why entertain that headache again?
Some people were born to be the headliner,
some people have the talent to
be the headliner, but they need better cast
and some people think they are the headliner but never will be.
for me Phil's the 2nd.
but again we can agree to disagree on that.
