Horachek's impact on the team

[cw]

To bring things back to Horacheck a little one of the things that I think speaks to how unimaginatively this team has been coached is that if the top line is the defensive trainwreck it appears to be...why hasn't there been any effort to balance that out a little? Kessel hasn't really played with any decent defensive forwards for a significant amount of time.

It's a tiny sample size but with Bozak, Kessel's GA/60 is 3.46. With Kadri it's 3.31. With Holland it's 1.95. With Winnik it was .60.

"This line stinks defensively, let's throw a decent defender on there to try things out" seems pretty rudimentary, doesn't it?

I know folks hate the +/- stat but here are the current worst Leafs forwards ranked by that stat
1 Phil Kessel -35
2 Tyler Bozak -33
3 James van Riemsdyk -32

4 Richard Panik -8
5 Nazem Kadri -7
6 Joffrey Lupul -6
(Clarkson -11 traded)

There's quite a jump between Kessel's line and the others. They did try Panik recently to replace JvR. Winnik had been tried but neither he nor Santorelli are around.

And then they have the problem that if they're down a goal, JvR-Bozak-Kessel is the best offensive line combination.

Kessel's +/- going from -4 to -35 is in significant part due to his lack of effort in my opinion. If he won't respond, he's going to be a liability no matter what. Hard for me to hang that all on the coach. 

 

[Kin]

I'm from a different era I guess. I just can't imagine someone like Jean B?liveau or Gordie Howe allowing something like this to enter their minds. They were a little before my time - or towards the end of their careers but I looked up to them.

Well, sure but with Howe's health problems and Beliveau's passing we've gotten to hear a lot of tributes to both guys this year and in all of those tributes the word "typical" didn't get used too often. They were exceptional in every sense of the word. I don't really buy that it's really a generational thing. In 50 years people will wax poetic about how Toews and Crosby always gave their darndest I'm sure and I'm enough of an amateur historian to know that every era had their oddballs and guys who stayed out too late and, yes, guys who were accused of dogging it from time to time.

While I think every fan is disappointed with what's happened with Kessel these past few months I think the difference in how it's being looked at boils down to how conscious a decision people think it is. I don't, for instance, think that Kessel wakes up and thinks "I'm going to give it 60% tonight". I think a lot of what we're seeing is his natural response to a bunch of things that have sort of all piled from the team relying on him as much as they have the last few years to their decision to go into the tank.

It's all well and good to say that Howe or Toews or whoever wouldn't respond in a similar way in a similar situation but ultimately we don't really know that. Howe didn't play in an era that rewarded failure(which is where I might draw my line in the sand about the "integrity" of the game)  and Toews hasn't been put in that situation. Kessel's always been an odd bird but as I get older and look at the players less as hero figures and more as people...personally, aesthetically, I like that about him.

As sports fans we're asked to suspend disbelief all the time and invest ourselves in things that don't really make sense. You know, the idea that we'd hold "allegiance" or "loyalty" to multi-billion dollar businesses that want to soak us for all we have or the central pretense that all of this matters in the first place. In order to be a sports fan we have to put our brains on hold everynow and again and for the most part that's something I do willingly and happily.

But in this situation, for me, i can't get too worked up about anyone not treating these games like game  of a Stanley Cup final when intellectually, I don't think that my interests as a fan aren't really served by it and I can empathize with the reaction of kind of reaching a point where there's not much value in maintaining that lie. If I'm not going to bury the franchise for not respecting the "integrity" of the game in trying to win every game I don't see how I'm going to then call the player's character into question for doing the same.

To quote Val Kilmer in Tombstone, which I do a lot, my hypocrisy only goes so far. 

 

[Kin]

I know folks hate the +/- stat but here are the current worst Leafs forwards ranked by that stat
1 Phil Kessel -35
2 Tyler Bozak -33
3 James van Riemsdyk -32

4 Richard Panik -8
5 Nazem Kadri -7
6 Joffrey Lupul -6
(Clarkson -11 traded)

There's quite a jump between Kessel's line and the others. They did try Panik recently to replace JvR. Winnik had been tried but neither he nor Santorelli are around.

It's not that people hate the stat, just that we don't think it shows the same thing. So take Panik, a guy who most people cite as being one of the guys who hasn't mailed it in. This year, when he's been on the ice, the Leafs have scored 41.9% of the 5 on 5 goals. Kessel, when he's been on the ice, the Leafs have scored 38.2% of the 5 on 5 goals.

So when I see that discrepancy in terms of +/- and the relatively minor difference in GF% it says that's, as busta has been saying, really more of a function of ice time and the quality of opposition. It's not good, sure, but there's pretty good evidence that keeping that top line together exacerbates things. It's a small sample size but when Kessel is paired with Kadri as opposed to Bozak, the team does considerably better both in GF%(46.7% up from 35.8%)from sense and in possession metrics. Contrary to the idea that Bozak is on the top line for defense, Kessel and Kadri together also have a slightly better GA/60.

And then they have the problem that if they're down a goal, JvR-Bozak-Kessel is the best offensive line combination.

Like I say above, I don't really think that's true. I think there's pretty good evidence that a line of Kessel-Kadri and a solid defensive presence would probably be the best for the team in that case.

So it's not about hanging this all on the coach but pointing out that his decisions right now look pretty bad and are a contributing factor to a lot of this second-half ugliness even while acknowledging that he wins the world's smallest trophy for seeming to have better on-ice tactics than Carlyle did.

 

[L K]

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

One of the ways that it's tricky to draw a line though between pro sports and any other job is that I don't know that what went on at the deadline and in the weeks leading up to the deadline have an outside equivalent.

Despite it being in the best interests of the organization long term, there's no getting around the reality of what blowing up a team is. When the Leafs traded players, good players, for draft picks they did so knowing that every game from then on would be be a lesser product. They didn't offer fans discounts on their seats, they didn't announce a slash in ticket prices to correspond with their decision to not be good for a few years.

So I don't know that we have a good handle on things like this. How often do teams decide to blow it all up and tear it down midseason? How much credibility does management have to go to players and say "Hey, you still have to care about this season" when they've decided not to?

I don't know, to draw a parallel to any other business seems tricky because you'd almost have to have a situation where a business makes a bunch of decisions that lets it be known that they don't want to make any money for a few years but, also, they won't have any tolerance for individuals not working their hardest.

I think if I was to come up with an equivalent from the "real world" it might be something along the lines of a long-rumoured downsizing  that finally comes down the pipe.  But the news comes from head operations in a vague enough way that every single employee is fearful for their job.  It's also stated that the layoffs are going to come in waves so even after escaping the first round, you know there is a good chance you are going to lose your job soon.

Obviously the financial crunch of getting traded isn't quite the same as losing your paycheck but a lot of the social/morale issues are certainly there.  Couple that with the crappy feeling that failure gives you and I can see why something like this would happen.  It doesn't mean I approve of it.  It certainly has affected my feelings on a lot of the players on this roster and I'm not sure if I will be all that keen to move forward in the same kind of fandom for the guys who are still around next year but I think it is something real.

I'm from a different era I guess. I just can't imagine someone like Jean B?liveau or Gordie Howe allowing something like this to enter their minds. They were a little before my time - or towards the end of their careers but I looked up to them. I cannot rationalize this. It just won't compute. It's values, ethics, honour - things like that.

What he's doing is just repugnant to me. It hurts his fellow players, his team, his fans, the sport - I just don't see much good from doing it - beyond it's the easy way out for him personally.

If a player did this in the original six era, he might get banished to the minors for life or get the crap beat out of him. Players on different teams couldn't socialize with each other. The regular season games were serious rivalries - and that was a part of why people watched - something was genuinely on the line. Players didn't like to lose. You couldn't wimp out - you had to show up.

Yesterday, I was feeling grateful my kids grew up Sundin fans and not Kessel fans. Kessel's example is not one I'd ever want my kids to follow.

Someone's paying you to do a job. It doesn't really matter how much. Don't be a dishonest weasel: do the job with an honest effort. What else the team does is beyond a players control. The players duty and responsibility is to compete to the best of their ability. When they don't, they're messing with the integrity of the sport. Have a little class. Try to be a sports figure kids can look up to - that is a part of it.

I don't care to come off as a prude on this (though I realize i'm probably failing at that). I understand it's an 82 game season and no one can give 110% for all 82 games. Some games, they're going to be banged up, road weary, not at their best, etc. A number of times Quinn's teams (Quinn being a coach who was pretty good at inspiring his club) didn't "show up" - one can't ride an emotional high all 82 games either. But over the season, they made a pretty fair effort - never one as blatantly bad as Kessel's this season.

I've seen this sort of thing: a breakdown of values,  creeping into all the other major sports. And so maybe I'm not exactly shocked. Maybe it's inevitable. It was a significant factor in turning me off them. If someone thinks I'm going to watch another 7 years of Phil Kessel doggin' it in a Leafs jersey, they're nuts. I won't ever be a fan of a player like that. I hope they run him out of town.

I don't know.  Years ago the Bruins used to hold training camp in London.  Part of their pre-skating warmup was they had to jog to the arena.  My Dad would sometimes be running on the same route and they didn't seem to mind that a kid was around them (the language didn't change) and he got to speak to a few of the players.  A handful of them couldn't speak on the jog down to the arena because they were so out of shape.  I mean now if a player came in that far out of shape they would be sent home.

So to be honest I'm not sure how much I'd buy comparing different eras because the goals and expectations for before during and after the season were so different.

 

[moon111]

IMHO, the Leaf's decided that everyone including Kessel had to start playing with defensive accountability.  Now either Kessel can't generate offence, or will not generate offence without 'cheating' his defensive responsibilities. 

 

[cw]

I'm from a different era I guess. I just can't imagine someone like Jean B?liveau or Gordie Howe allowing something like this to enter their minds. They were a little before my time - or towards the end of their careers but I looked up to them. I cannot rationalize this. It just won't compute. It's values, ethics, honour - things like that.

What he's doing is just repugnant to me. It hurts his fellow players, his team, his fans, the sport - I just don't see much good from doing it - beyond it's the easy way out for him personally.

If a player did this in the original six era, he might get banished to the minors for life or get the crap beat out of him. Players on different teams couldn't socialize with each other. The regular season games were serious rivalries - and that was a part of why people watched - something was genuinely on the line. Players didn't like to lose. You couldn't wimp out - you had to show up.

Yesterday, I was feeling grateful my kids grew up Sundin fans and not Kessel fans. Kessel's example is not one I'd ever want my kids to follow.

Someone's paying you to do a job. It doesn't really matter how much. Don't be a dishonest weasel: do the job with an honest effort. What else the team does is beyond a players control. The players duty and responsibility is to compete to the best of their ability. When they don't, they're messing with the integrity of the sport. Have a little class. Try to be a sports figure kids can look up to - that is a part of it.

I don't care to come off as a prude on this (though I realize i'm probably failing at that). I understand it's an 82 game season and no one can give 110% for all 82 games. Some games, they're going to be banged up, road weary, not at their best, etc. A number of times Quinn's teams (Quinn being a coach who was pretty good at inspiring his club) didn't "show up" - one can't ride an emotional high all 82 games either. But over the season, they made a pretty fair effort - never one as blatantly bad as Kessel's this season.

I've seen this sort of thing: a breakdown of values,  creeping into all the other major sports. And so maybe I'm not exactly shocked. Maybe it's inevitable. It was a significant factor in turning me off them. If someone thinks I'm going to watch another 7 years of Phil Kessel doggin' it in a Leafs jersey, they're nuts. I won't ever be a fan of a player like that. I hope they run him out of town.

I don't know.  Years ago the Bruins used to hold training camp in London.  Part of their pre-skating warmup was they had to jog to the arena.  My Dad would sometimes be running on the same route and they didn't seem to mind that a kid was around them (the language didn't change) and he got to speak to a few of the players.  A handful of them couldn't speak on the jog down to the arena because they were so out of shape.  I mean now if a player came in that far out of shape they would be sent home.

So to be honest I'm not sure how much I'd buy comparing different eras because the goals and expectations for before during and after the season were so different.

They didn't know nearly as much about fitness back then as you might think. And they often worked two jobs because hockey didn't pay enough. Kessel makes more in 20 minutes of ice time than many of those guys made in their entire hockey career. In about 24 seconds of ice time, Phil Kessel earns  what the minor leaguers like Howe got paid for a season when Howe broke in. Howe made as much money playing semi-pro baseball at the time. And Howe managed to double his hockey pay (=50 seconds of Kessel ice time - a NHL shift) when he made it to the NHL. Kessel today would earn average pay of the 60s in about 2-3 shifts. Financially, times have changed. Hockey back then was closer to a bonus job to supplement your income than a career for many of the players.

Training camp was really just that - literally. They showed up with their summer beer bellies from being car salesman or summer school teachers and started "training" to get in shape. Read up on the '72 Summit Series. The Russians showed up fit and in game shape while the Canadians were doing their usual shedding a few pounds from their off summer - which is the key reason why the Russians got the jump in that series and why Canada was able to come back (they got in better game shape as the series went along).

One of the first guys in hockey I recall who changed attitudes on fitness was a Leaf - Norm Ullman. He'd spent much of his career playing in Detroit. Came to Toronto in a trade and they figured due to his age that he should be effectively washed up. But at age 35 or so, a few years after expansion from the original six:
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000381971.html
he led the Leafs and Dave Keon in scoring and folks said "what the heck is going on? How is Ullman doing this?" What the media found out he was doing was working out all summer running and improving/maintaining his fitness. Prior to that some hockey players worked physical jobs to help them stay in shape (construction, farming) but that was kind of the extent of it. Aerobics was not in our common vocabulary at that time.

Showing up to training camp as they did was kind of the norm. Nobody thought too horribly about it if the guy arrived out of shape because maybe he was behind a desk working all summer.

I've said it before: I don't think there's a member of the last Cup winning Leafs team who could crack the roster of this lousy team based upon how they'd show up in training camp and how much bigger, stronger, faster, better conditioned, better coached, etc players are today. Keon and Kozun, Ian White and Tim Horton were about the same size. We've learned a lot and come a long way.

Long story short: in '72-73, I sat in Maple Leafs Gardens with Jim Ryan, world record holder in the mile chatting one on one for an hour or two, about what he did for training, diet and the psychology of running, He was awesome and answered everything in a forthright way: an American kindly helping a curious Canadian kid. I could probably write the essence of what was known about diet and training at that time by the fastest miler in the world in a page or two: "Run 100-200 miles per week" and "take some glucose tablets or eat a Mars bar a few minutes before you run" - pretty shallow stuff and nobody seemed to know the answers.

The first warnings about cigarettes started to come out in the 60s but it took quite a while for folks to heed them.
http://www.si.com/nhl/2012/02/29/players-smokingcigarettesnhlhockey
Bossy, Lafleur, Mario Lemieux, etc - all pretty heavy smokers for example.

We had stuff like Jack LaLanne on TV or Charles Atlas - there was some weight training but I don't recall a lot of folks buying into that in hockey at the time or making it a major deal.

So to pass judgement on their fitness strikes me as considerably off base. Folks really hadn't widely figured it all out to the extent it was widely expected like it is today.

It was a small league - only 6 teams. Competition for roster spots was very intense.  Because they played each other a lot, hatred of each other grew. If you showed up to play like Kessel has, they'd either beat the crap out of you or bury you in the minors. It was post WWII and these teams were kind of going to war with each other. They had little tolerance for chickens and guys who wouldn't stand up for their teammates - via effort or fighting. Values seemed more important. It was a different era.

 

[Courtnall]

You can't equate this to the real word because the real world is work and this is a sport. You play sports to win, regardless of pay cheque or for the glory of claiming to be the best on your street. To not play to win is a blatant disregard for the ethics of playing a sport. I have never played a sport to not win when playing with equals. You might call it a winning instinct, or the will to win. Most athletes have this, Phil Kessel does not. He is fine with playing good enough and not his best.

 

[cw]

http://www.tsn.ca/talent/the-mind-bending-slump-of-phil-kessel-1.237357
His production in that time-frame (Dec. 17 ? Mar. 21) is stunning to behold. Entering Saturday's play Kessel ranked:
?    247th (tied) in even-strength goals (3)
?    336th (tied) in even-strength points (7)
?    142nd (tied) in total points (20)
?    158th (tied) in total goals (7)

The numbers are even less flattering when narrowed down to just the New Year.

Kessel has just three even-strength points in 2015 ? a stretch of 35 games. He does not have an even-strength assist since the calendar flipped over from 2014.

He has as many even-strength points in that same span mind you as fellow Leafs Brandon Kozun, Trevor Smith and Roman Polak and less than Cody Franson and Mike Santorelli, who were traded just before the Mar. 2 deadline.

Daniel Winnik, who was dealt in late February, days before Franson and Santorelli, has more than three times as many even-strength points (10) as Kessel since the start of January and exactly double the goals (6); all this despite playing in 13 fewer games with the Leafs.
...
Kessel, by comparison, finished second in the league last season with 29 even-strength goals.

To me, that doesn't define a slump. That's what quitting looks like.

The Leafs have been badly out-chanced with their highest-paid player on the ice, especially in recent months. The 27-year-old entered Saturday's tilt with a minus-77 even-strength scoring chance differential in the New Year, by far the worst on the team; opponents had managed 267 such chances versus 190 created.
...
Kessel can typically point to chances going unconverted during a usual cold spell, but right now even he acknowledges that those chances just aren't there in terms of quality or quantity.
...
Often Kessel just hasn't looked engaged, an observation implied on more than a few occasions by Horachek.

It's not like he's snake bit and the chances are not going in. He's not generating the chances or quality chances by his own admission and he's giving up a disproportionate number of chances - so he's earning that so-called flawed terrible +/- as fairly as it can be earned on a general level.

The fall-off correlates partly to the stricter brand interim coach Peter Horachek has enforced since relieving Randy Carlyle behind Toronto's bench. The shift in approach has meant less cheating for the high-flying opportunities Kessel thrived on previously (his possession numbers also sky-rocketed).

Certainly plausible what Horachek asked him to do was a factor. But again, I find it hard to point the finger heavily at the coach when the player isn't making an effort.

 

[Chris]

The numbers are stunning. My impression is that they tried the new system for a while, but when the results didn't come they basically gave up.

 

[princedpw]

For the first time in more than a decade, I just stopped watching the Leafs this year.  I haven't watched since November.  But the fact they were able to jettison the Clarkson contract and are finally forced to rebuild gives me the first bit of hope in the last couple of years.  Plus, they have maybe a 10% chance at a generational player.

If Kessel hadn't tanked it up so bad, maybe lifting them to 10th in conference again, maybe they'd still be hanging on to UFAs and trading away 2nd round draft picks instead of the reverse.

As far as trading Kessel, I'm not too worried.  If I reverse the situation and pretend the Leafs were a playoff team with a strong defense, I'd be salivating at the prospect of getting a player with Kessel's profile, I really would.  If I were a GM with a strong team, I'd look at Kessel and his situation and just assume that my environment was different and that he wouldn't play like that on my team.  I'd look at him and see a consistent 30-40 goal scorer, 70-80 point getter --- one of only 5-10 such players in the league.  (Even now, he's tied for 25th in goal-scoring despite the epic slump, which seems crazy.)  I'd reason that players as good as Kessel very rarely move these days and I'd guess that our only chance to add one to the team would be to trade for Kessel.  There won't be any UFAs on the market with his skills will there?  I'm sure I'd need to dump some salary back to make the transaction work. I'd happily do that plus some good young assets that wont mature for 2-5 years if I thought a top-10 scorer could make me a contender.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to watch the Leafs again this year, but nevertheless, I've got a little more hope now than I had last year at this time.

Now, if only the raptors could learn to play some defense ... otherwise I may have to go off Toronto sports completely ...

 

[Kin]

They didn't know nearly as much about fitness back then as you might think. And they often worked two jobs because hockey didn't pay enough. Kessel makes more in 20 minutes of ice time than many of those guys made in their entire hockey career. In about 24 seconds of ice time, Phil Kessel earns  what the minor leaguers like Howe got paid for a season when Howe broke in. Howe made as much money playing semi-pro baseball at the time. And Howe managed to double his hockey pay (=50 seconds of Kessel ice time - a NHL shift) when he made it to the NHL. Kessel today would earn average pay of the 60s in about 2-3 shifts. Financially, times have changed. Hockey back then was closer to a bonus job to supplement your income than a career for many of the players.

Yeah, a lot of that is pretty hyperbolic. In 1972 the minimum NHL salary was 15,000 dollars a year. The median salary was 25,000 dollars. Top guys were earning as much as 300,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation those numbers today would be 83,000, 139,000 and around 1.6 million dollars. Hockey players today are paid better, which is a good thing, but you'd have to go pretty far back to find a point where players had to work in the off-season lest their families starve. Their off-season jobs supplemented the money they made playing hockey, not the other way around.

 

[Kin]

You can't equate this to the real word because the real world is work and this is a sport. You play sports to win, regardless of pay cheque or for the glory of claiming to be the best on your street. To not play to win is a blatant disregard for the ethics of playing a sport.

That doesn't make a ton of sense. Hockey, NHL hockey, is a business. It exists in the real world. Working hard in the NHL is no more a matter of ethics than working hard in real life.

 

[Rebel_1812]

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

One of the ways that it's tricky to draw a line though between pro sports and any other job is that I don't know that what went on at the deadline and in the weeks leading up to the deadline have an outside equivalent.

Despite it being in the best interests of the organization long term, there's no getting around the reality of what blowing up a team is. When the Leafs traded players, good players, for draft picks they did so knowing that every game from then on would be be a lesser product. They didn't offer fans discounts on their seats, they didn't announce a slash in ticket prices to correspond with their decision to not be good for a few years.

So I don't know that we have a good handle on things like this. How often do teams decide to blow it all up and tear it down midseason? How much credibility does management have to go to players and say "Hey, you still have to care about this season" when they've decided not to?

I don't know, to draw a parallel to any other business seems tricky because you'd almost have to have a situation where a business makes a bunch of decisions that lets it be known that they don't want to make any money for a few years but, also, they won't have any tolerance for individuals not working their hardest.

I think if I was to come up with an equivalent from the "real world" it might be something along the lines of a long-rumoured downsizing  that finally comes down the pipe.  But the news comes from head operations in a vague enough way that every single employee is fearful for their job.  It's also stated that the layoffs are going to come in waves so even after escaping the first round, you know there is a good chance you are going to lose your job soon.

Obviously the financial crunch of getting traded isn't quite the same as losing your paycheck but a lot of the social/morale issues are certainly there.  Couple that with the crappy feeling that failure gives you and I can see why something like this would happen.  It doesn't mean I approve of it.  It certainly has affected my feelings on a lot of the players on this roster and I'm not sure if I will be all that keen to move forward in the same kind of fandom for the guys who are still around next year but I think it is something real.

I'm from a different era I guess. I just can't imagine someone like Jean B?liveau or Gordie Howe allowing something like this to enter their minds. They were a little before my time - or towards the end of their careers but I looked up to them. I cannot rationalize this. It just won't compute. It's values, ethics, honour - things like that.

What he's doing is just repugnant to me. It hurts his fellow players, his team, his fans, the sport - I just don't see much good from doing it - beyond it's the easy way out for him personally.

If a player did this in the original six era, he might get banished to the minors for life or get the crap beat out of him. Players on different teams couldn't socialize with each other. The regular season games were serious rivalries - and that was a part of why people watched - something was genuinely on the line. Players didn't like to lose. You couldn't wimp out - you had to show up.

Yesterday, I was feeling grateful my kids grew up Sundin fans and not Kessel fans. Kessel's example is not one I'd ever want my kids to follow.

Someone's paying you to do a job. It doesn't really matter how much. Don't be a dishonest weasel: do the job with an honest effort. What else the team does is beyond a players control. The players duty and responsibility is to compete to the best of their ability. When they don't, they're messing with the integrity of the sport. Have a little class. Try to be a sports figure kids can look up to - that is a part of it.

I don't care to come off as a prude on this (though I realize i'm probably failing at that). I understand it's an 82 game season and no one can give 110% for all 82 games. Some games, they're going to be banged up, road weary, not at their best, etc. A number of times Quinn's teams (Quinn being a coach who was pretty good at inspiring his club) didn't "show up" - one can't ride an emotional high all 82 games either. But over the season, they made a pretty fair effort - never one as blatantly bad as Kessel's this season.

I've seen this sort of thing: a breakdown of values,  creeping into all the other major sports. And so maybe I'm not exactly shocked. Maybe it's inevitable. It was a significant factor in turning me off them. If someone thinks I'm going to watch another 7 years of Phil Kessel doggin' it in a Leafs jersey, they're nuts. I won't ever be a fan of a player like that. I hope they run him out of town.

Since we are ragging on phil.  Do you think he was the one behind the salute gate?  Personally I thought it was his idea at the time.  Behavior since then seems to confirm  this.

 

[Andy007]

Since we are ragging on phil.  Do you think he was the one behind the salute gate?  Personally I thought it was his idea at the time.  Behavior since then seems to confirm  this.

You know who I personally blame for the Jonas Hoglund trade fax machine debacle? Steve Sullivan. All of his behaviour since then seems to confirm it.

 

[Kin]

Certainly plausible what Horachek asked him to do was a factor. But again, I find it hard to point the finger heavily at the coach when the player isn't making an effort.

So then either a head coach is at least partially responsible for motivating his players, in which case Horacheck clearly isn't doing much of a job or Horacheck is in no way responsible for motivating players in which case he's reacted to Kessel mailing in half a season by playing him 19 minutes a night this month without shaking up his line and giving him tons of PP time.

It really doesn't matter where on the spectrum someone falls in their opinion of Kessel, there's really no defending how Horacheck's handled it.

 

[Joe S.]

You know what I miss - completely off topic I guess - that even if Sundin took a night off, and they were down in the third, you knew the last 5 minutes or so he'd turn it on. Those last minute scrambles in front of the net - whether they scored or not, were fun.

I've barely seen that since with any iteration of team.

 

[Coco-puffs]

IMHO, the Leaf's decided that everyone including Kessel had to start playing with defensive accountability.  Now either Kessel can't generate offence, or will not generate offence without 'cheating' his defensive responsibilities.

No one player can generate offence on his own (without cheating).  Put Kessel on a line with other good (1st line) players in the league, he will be productive without cheating as he won't have to generate the offence all by himself.  I'm not giving Kessel a reprieve here, I'm just saying Kessel isn't solely to blame for his lack of production. 

Finally, what really makes me roll my eyes is how a lot of people are now getting on his case about not going into the corners and playing physical etc.  and equating that to "not trying hard enough".  He's NEVER done that and nobody really complained until his production fell off.   

 

[cw]

They didn't know nearly as much about fitness back then as you might think. And they often worked two jobs because hockey didn't pay enough. Kessel makes more in 20 minutes of ice time than many of those guys made in their entire hockey career. In about 24 seconds of ice time, Phil Kessel earns  what the minor leaguers like Howe got paid for a season when Howe broke in. Howe made as much money playing semi-pro baseball at the time. And Howe managed to double his hockey pay (=50 seconds of Kessel ice time - a NHL shift) when he made it to the NHL. Kessel today would earn average pay of the 60s in about 2-3 shifts. Financially, times have changed. Hockey back then was closer to a bonus job to supplement your income than a career for many of the players.

Yeah, a lot of that is pretty hyperbolic.

I don't think so. Adjusting for inflation, converting Kessel's dollars to 1965, he roughly makes an average 1960s NHL career in 60 minutes of ice time. I don't think adjusting for inflation changes the message much.

In 1972 the minimum NHL salary was 15,000 dollars a year. The median salary was 25,000 dollars. Top guys were earning as much as 300,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation those numbers today would be 83,000, 139,000 and around 1.6 million dollars. Hockey players today are paid better, which is a good thing, but you'd have to go pretty far back to find a point where players had to work in the off-season lest their families starve.

The NHLPA started in '67 (after a failed attempt in the '50s). League expansion started in '67. The WHA formed in '71. Sports economies improved. Things like that started to help improve players salaries in the '70s.

In '68-69 (around there), I think Howe became the top paid player in hockey at $100,000 when he found out he was only 3rd highest on his team - who had signed Carl Brewer to more.

Accounting for inflation, this season, Phil Kessel roughly earns an average 1972 NHL career as you've noted in less than six games, ~117 minutes of ice time.

Again, I don't think adjusting for inflation or looking at the 70s salaries changes the message much. Kessel's making a gigantic boat load of dough by comparison.

Their off-season jobs supplemented the money they made playing hockey, not the other way around.

One might look at it that way. I don't. I don't think the players  did either.

Back then, if someone blew a player's knee out, that player's career was over. There was no option for reconstructive knee surgery and the many medical things that can be done today to extend careers. I don't recall any significant insurance payouts for injury. Nor did they have a good and reliable pension. And that's part of the reason the players were so intent on policing themselves and looking out for each other.

Because they were not paid nearly as much while they played, the players back then couldn't save tons for post retirement. With no insurance, little in pension and little in savings, most players didn't have much to fall back on.

And so many of them also worked at something while they played - not just in the summers. The seasons-playoffs were  shorter. Most notably for the Leafs back then maybe, Red Kelly was a member of parliament in Ottawa while he played for the Leafs during some of his Cup seasons in Toronto. Some taught school/coached. Some sold cars or insurance. Some worked on business ventures.

For those lacking an education, which was often the case back then, they had to rely on physical labour. That was tougher to do back then if they suffered physically from playing - which was common.

As I see it, they had roughly four average years (slightly shorter careers back then) of nice supplemental income from the NHL and for the rest of their life, they had to look after their careers - real world regular jobs like the rest of us. Many of them conducted themselves accordingly knowing their hockey paycheque could stop any day without much of a safety net.

Maybe some of this is driving a sense of entitlement in Kessel ... but I sure don't recollect seeing that in players of the original six era.

 

[Kin]

Again, I don't think adjusting for inflation or looking at the 70s salaries changes the message much. Kessel's making a gigantic boat load of dough by comparison.

Well, thank heavens we've firmly established that sports stars of today are better paid than the ones of yesteryear.

Maybe some of this is driving a sense of entitlement in Kessel ... but I sure don't recollect seeing that in players of the original six era.

Ask me I'd say it's all of that rap music.

 

[cw]

Certainly plausible what Horachek asked him to do was a factor. But again, I find it hard to point the finger heavily at the coach when the player isn't making an effort.

So then either a head coach is at least partially responsible for motivating his players, in which case Horacheck clearly isn't doing much of a job or Horacheck is in no way responsible for motivating players in which case he's reacted to Kessel mailing in half a season by playing him 19 minutes a night this month without shaking up his line and giving him tons of PP time.

It really doesn't matter where on the spectrum someone falls in their opinion of Kessel, there's really no defending how Horacheck's handled it.

I'm on the opposite side of that:

There's no acceptable defense of Kessel's lack of effort that I've seen. That's a pretty straightforward issue.

Maybe Kessel promised his coach things would be different if Horachek gave him the ice time he did. Who knows?

Maybe some of it came about because they were behind in so many games and maybe Horachek felt Kessel making maybe half an effort was better than giving a 4th line AHLer more ice time - because the team was desperate for a goal. Who knows? I haven't heard Horachek address this question.

So how much responsibility Horachek bears, I'm really not sure. I think there's room for some debate or we need more info before drawing conclusions.

I can't think of any good, acceptable excuse for Kessel to not make a decent effort.