Once a highly appreciated but equally scrutinized weapon on a Leafs Toronto Maple Leafs team that realistically never should have been expected to compete for anything, now a three-time (yes, three-time) Stanley Cup champion with two different teams, Phil Kessel isn’t ready to hang them up yet.
After being acquired in a 2009 trade that unfortunately sent the draft picks that would turn into Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton to the Boston Bruins, Phil Kessel brought a spark and a deadly snap shot to a Leafs team that was stuck in limbo between not enough star power to contend for a playoff spot and not enough draft capital to rebuild. He was often deemed somebody that you can’t win with by media critics and was even pointed to as a reason for the firing of then-head coach Randy Carlyle. Turns out, Phil the Thrill wasn’t the problem at all – he went on to win two Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017 and was also a member of the Cup-winning Vegas Golden Knights team in 2022-23.
According to a recent episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast, Kessel has been calling teams with the desire to sign with a team, despite not having played a game since the 2022-23 playoffs.
“He wants to play” said Elliotte Friedman on the podcast. “Paul Bissonette had a tweet this week about ‘how come Phil Kessel can’t get a job?’ and I was looking at it, because I had heard and was going to check, that Kessel was calling teams and really wanted to play. That seems to confirm it, then I heard it from a couple of people.”
“He’s legitimate about it. That three-on-three league that was supposed to start up but didn’t, I heard Kessel was one of those guys they were really talking to about playing there. He wants to play, he loves hockey and he wants to play. I don’t know if this is going to happen, but it’s very, very legitimate that he wants to play.”
Kessel had an opportunity to play last season after signing a tryout agreement with the Vancouver Canucks, but they opted not to sign him. While there likely isn’t a fit in Toronto at this point, it would be great to see a team take a chance on the 36-year-old. If nothing else, it would be great to see him ink a contract so he can have a last ditch effort at the 1000-point mark, currently sitting at 992 for his career.
Kessel appeared in 446 games with the Leafs between 2009-2015, scoring 181 goals en route to 394 points in those games. He scored 14 goals and registered 36 points in his last season with the Vegas Golden Knights.
