Third Time’s Not a Charm: Why Bruins Fans Need to Get Over Kessel

My father had a rule with us kids growing up. The first time you tell a joke, it’s hysterical. The second time you tell a joke, it’s funny. The third time you tell a joke, it’s not funny anymore. (This put a kabosh on using the “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana!” knock-knock joke multiple times real quick.)

As one of the only Boston Bruins fans on the planet who doesn’t hate Phil Kessel, I’m beginning to understand my father’s sentiment.

You may hate Phil Kessel all you want – sports fandom thrives on hatred, as sad as it may sound. Intense fandom means hating particular teams and defector players. As a Buffalo Bills fan, I hate the Dallas Cowboys. I hate the Dallas Stars for making my Buffalo Sabres fan mother sob in 1999. I understand the dislike of those dreaded dirty Habs. I get it. Fans hate players. Fans boo players. Fans go on rants about players.

But after a year, isn’t it enough?

What did Phil Kessel do besides recognize that the current system of the Boston Bruins has no place for college-built players (aka, why Blake Wheeler is always a subject of trade rumors, and why Chuck Kobasew was trade bait, why the player who showed the most in training camp, Matt Bartkowski, was sent down, and why it’s an absolute long shot that David Warsofsky will ever see the Garden ice)?

Kessel didn’t hang with the guys? Well, he wasn’t 21 for most of his time in Boston, and many of his friends were college hockey players in the area. Who are you going to hang out with – a guy you know from the National Development Team that is your age, or a guy with a family, kids, who may be 10 years older than you? Kessel may have hung out with guys outside of the team a bit more than others, but when you have existing friends here (of which he did on many of the area college hockey teams), you’re going to spend time with them. That never made him any less of a Boston Bruin.

Kessel didn’t want to be a Boston Bruin? The NHL is a business, and hockey players are trying to make a living. If you’re offered a job with a pay increase, aren’t you going to consider it? And if you don’t have strong ties to an area, office, or business, money becomes that overwhelming factor in that decision. A young kid, with a relatively short career to spend making a living from playing hockey in comparison to the length of the career of us desk jockeys, decided to make more money while he could.

The Bruins brass enjoys a certain type of player, and that isn’t the nuanced non-fighter that college hockey and US junior hockey currently produces. And that’s the Bruins’ choice, and it’s working for them. Kessel wasn’t going to fit into that system, and is flourishing in the Toronto Maple Leafs system, a team run by Brian Burke, an executive that might understand the training and style of a player like Kessel better than anyone else in the NHL. A player like Milan Lucic thrives in the Bruins system – a junior hockey bred bruiser whose defensive mentality is as welcome as his offensive play-making. A player like Kessel, the exact opposite, was not going to last long term, despite his early success, because he plays a different style of hockey.

Both organizations seem to be reaping the benefits of the trade. Tyler Seguin, obtained with the first rounder received in the Kessel deal, is a steady player whose presence offensively has been very helpful to a Sturm and Savard-less Bruins. Kessel has brought direly needed goal scoring and excitement to a much-maligned Maple Leafs franchise. It’s worked out well on both ends – a quality many trades do not amount to in the long-run.

And personally, I find it a bit disingenuous that Bruins fans, an entire year post-trade, take delight in the hits to and booing of a young man who once had cancer, who never sad anything awful towards them, and who, while he was in Boston, contributed substantially to his team.

So fellow Bruins fans, find another joke. To use my dad’s saying, last night was the third time, and it’s not funny anymore.