Being late to the Phil Kessel Party (Trending Topics)

It has always been incredibly difficult to score in the playoffs. Few players can do it reliably. Even fewer can do it in so dominant a fashion as to average a point in every playoff game of their careers.

Among all active players, only four have played in at least 30 playoff games and recorded an average of a point per game. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, not surprisingly, are in the lead with 131 and 121, respectively, in 114 postseason games each. Mike Cammalleri brings up the rear with 32 in 32. And nestled right in the middle after Wednesday night's Game 3 performance is Phil Kessel, with 37 in 36.

And among all active players, Kessel trails only Vladimir Tarasenko in playoff goals per game. He's back by 0.03 a night.

The book on Kessel, of course, is that he is and always has been a total loser idiot who sucks and never tries, which is why the Bruins traded him to Toronto when they had the chance, and why the Leafs traded him to Pittsburgh last summer as they tried to rebuild their team.

Hell, as Kessel torched yet another opponent in this year's postseason on Wednesday night, Pierre McGuire actually called him a “reclamation project” by the Pens that's really paying off. This about a player who scored 141 points in the previous two seasons, and who as recently as the end of the regular season — 26-33-59 — was considered something of a bust for the Pens, who paid a dear price for him even if Torontonians felt the Leafs got a little bit hosed on the deal.

This is basically a Joe Thornton thing all over again, where the perception is that this is a guy who does not “deliver in the clutch,” but who in fact does so on a very regular basis. Even if you're just going with the most surface-level of analysis and looking at what he puts on the scoreboard, this is a guy who contributes pretty impressively, and consistently regardless of circumstance. In terms of pure goalscoring per game, this is his worst postseason yet (“just” 0.5 per night), but he's contributing more assists to the till than ever before, and by a large margin.

Kessel has 12 primary points (goals or first assists) in all situations this postseason, tying him for second in the league with Brent Burns and Nikita Kucherov, behind Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture. Even Crosby only has 10. His primary points per 60 minutes is fourth in the league, trailing only Andrew Shaw, Jason Pominville, and Couture.

And in fact, his primary points per 60 was also fourth the last time he made the playoffs in 2012-13. He was also 13th in the NHL postseason in this stat in 2008-09, and in 2007-08, he was second.

These are, of course, context-free stats. But regardless of the context, you have to be impressed with a player who is second in primary points among all players with at least 200 minutes in the postseason from 2007 to present. Only Danny Briere, whose postseason scoring prowess has been praised to the heavens (and rightly so), has more.

So where does the reputation as a playoff loser who doesn't produce come from? Not surprisingly, a lot of it comes from the Toronto media, who did a lot of Kessel-blaming when the team didn't perform against a Bruins team that dramatically overmatched him, because the knives were out long before that series. As far back as his first playoff appearance in Boston, Claude Julien — well-known for handling super-talented rookies very, very, very well — benched him for critical games against the Canadiens because he wasn't trying hard enough and so on.

The idea that Kessel dogs it on a regular basis has always been there. He doesn't appear to be in the best shape and he doesn't seem to get along super-well with every single one of his teammates or coaches. Hell, even in his draft year at the University of Minnesota, teams were criticizing him and shuffling him down the draft boards despite the fact that he had one of the best seasons by any draft-eligible 18-year-old in recent college hockey memory.

Part of the reason why, I think, relates back to the whole “How's your breath?” question from Pierre McGuire after Wednesday's game. Kessel was breathing heavy on the bench in the third period, sucking serious wind. The idea has always been that conditioning is a big issue for Kessel, because he Eats Hot Dogs and Doesn't Skate Much In The Summer and all the things sportswriters and hockey people say are verboten for any player.

But all those concerns have had seemingly no impact on Kessel in terms of his durability or indeed his ability to score. Kessel's been in the league since 2006-07, and is one of only 20 players to clear 750 regular-season games. That's a lot of staying healthy every night all season long for 10 years. And among all players since 2006-07, he's tied for 57th in points per game. In goals per game, he's 32nd.

And he's 25th in primary points per 60 in all situations.

There are very few players above him where you would say, “Oh yeah, that guy's not very good.” Most of those players played fewer than 200 games during this period. Almost everyone else is a multiple-time All-Star. There are also a lot of players below him who have had unbelievable careers to this point.

It is very much not Kessel's fault that the Bruins when he played there were a shell of what they would become. It is not Kessel's fault that for basically all but the last season of his tenure in Toronto, the Leafs were run by a number of borderline-incompetents, and coached by two others for the entirety of his time there. He has only appeared in four postseasons because this is his first year on a team that is actually good.

Let's put it this way: In his career, Kessel's most common playoff linemates have been Nick Bonino and Carl Hagelin.

They're out in front by nearly 60 minutes, in fact. They've found something that works in Pittsburgh, that relies on the speed of all involved, and it gives Kessel plenty of opportunities to bury the puck. And because of his talent level, he's done so with regularity and aplomb and to devastating effect. There also seems to be no signs of him slowing down, no matter how he looks physically, how he deals with the media, or anything else.

If this were any other player than Kessel, we don't have any of these discussions. If the hockey world were rational, we don't have any of these discussions. In a vacuum, players like Kessel, Joe Thornton, and Alex Ovechkin don't need to keep it up into their late 30s and grow mountain-man beards to generate some goodwill for exemplary careers. Kessel, unlike Thornton and Ovechkin, probably isn't a Hall of Famer when everything is all done. On the other hand, he's got almost 580 career points before turning 29, and despite playing with some deeply rotten teams for the vast majority of his career.

And the idea that he's thriving because he's not The Guy in Pittsburgh is silly too. He thrived when he was The Guy and he didn't seem to like it very much, and didn't have a lot of talent around him. He was still 16th in the NHL in points from 2009-15. The next-closest Leaf was Tyler Bozak, about 160 points behind (and only 79 of Bozak's 232 points came without Kessel also ending up on the scoresheet).

Now that he's surrounded by actual talent it's, “Whoa, hey, this guy's good!” It's astonishing how little attention you have to pay to have been taken by surprise here.

Phil Kessel is not a reclamation project. He's just awesome. A weird guy whose purest joy and most valuable skill is filling the net with pucks. Long may he continue.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via War on Ice unless otherwise stated.

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