Penguins @ Leafs - Oct. 11th, 7:00pm - CBC, TSN 1050

[L K]

Yeah, that seems like a long ways from the sort of quantitative hammer that smashes an opposing viewpoint into unfounded gibberish to me but there you go.

I think if you take it combined with how well Kessel has played over his career while following a similar training regimen, it pokes more than enough holes in the theory that he's out of shape to sink it.

I agree to the extent that given that Kessel would never have been ESPN's first choice for their annual body issue that trying to directly tie a bad start to whatever perceived issues there might have been in camp with his fitness doesn't necessarily have merit.

But that said, given the relative paucity of hard facts that we have concerning Kessel's physical fitness and, in a broader sense, the way the Leafs measure these things and whether or not a player is rated vs. a fixed standard or if they're rated against themselves then I don't think you can just dismiss it as being a subject of consideration. You're right that Kessel's past performance with a similar training routine is relevant but I could grab a dozen quotes from athletes who would say that physical training becomes more important as they get older and that what worked for them at 22 might not work as well at 27.

Well you could also point to the lower body injury he had at the end of training camp and easily attribute his lack of explosiveness to that.  And despite the general narrative that Kessel's facial profile looks more like mine than Gary Roberts I don't think 2 games is enough to warrant the declaration that Kessel is out of shape.

He looked fine last night.  Not his usual zippy self but he looked more mobile than in previous games. 

 

[Kin]

Well you could also point to the lower body injury he had at the end of training camp and easily attribute his lack of explosiveness to that.

Well, no, you couldn't and I think we're sort of getting at something here. I can't attribute anything to a "lower body injury" because that's not actually a thing. That's disinformation more than it is information. Without knowing what it was we don't know how it would affect him or even whether it could itself be attributed to Kessel not being in the best of shape. My point here is precisely that we don't have much in the way of actual information which, as much as this drives some people nuts, does mean there's some room for supposition.

So you're right that those two games aren't enough for a definitive declaration one way or another but if someone says "Kessel looks a bit out of shape" then those two tweets are pretty far from the word of god.